


Just A Dream

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-27
Updated: 2006-02-26
Packaged: 2018-08-15 23:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8077876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: As Enterprise prepares for shore leave, Hoshi and Malcolm are plagued by mysterious dreams calling them to the new planet.  (03/12/2004)





	1. CHAPTER 1--Incubus Attack

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

CHAPTER 1--Incubus Attack

"We've been waiting for you, Hoshi Sato," they said. "Soon you will be with us." 

She couldn't catch her breath. She tried desperately to run, to suck in air, but her skull began to clench from the pressure. Her gasps misted white in the chilly wind, and she fell to her knees, choking. 

Who are you, she tried to say, but all that came out of her mouth, in what was no language at all, was a feeble wheeze. Who are you? A hand touched her shoulder, and she laboriously turned her face to meet a pair of dark eyeless holes, empty yet burning deep within her. 

"We are waiting, my little star," they said, and the eyes came closer. "We are waiting for you." 

Air came flooding into her starved lungs, and she screamed until she thought her head would burst. 

"Are you all right, Hoshi?" asked Trip, glancing sidelong at her as they stood in the turbolift, heading for the bridge for T'Pol's morning briefing. 

"I'm fine," she replied, though she hardly felt it. "Just... didn't sleep well, that's all. Nothing more." Understatement of the century, she thought, and couldn't hold back a yawn. 

"Are you sure? You look awfully pale," said Trip, blithely ignoring her subtle hints to leave her alone. "Maybe you should go talk to Doctor Phlox." They stepped off the lift and joined the others around the situation table. 

"I'm fine," said Hoshi, and let just a hint of exasperation creep into her voice. "I had some nightmares. Really, it's nothing." You seem to be getting better at those understatements, she thought. The nightmares had been coming more and more frequently now, two and three a night, and they left her exhausted. She knew she had slept, because she had woken up so many times, but she certainly didn't feel like it. 

Across the table, she caught Malcolm's eye. His face was unusually pensive, even for him, and he looked about as tired as she felt. She wondered if she had such dark shadows under her eyes, too, and decided that the raccoon look most definitely did not suit the armory officer. 

"Are we all here?" said the captain, stepping out of his ready room. He, in contrast, sounded quite perky, and, Hoshi thought jealously, had probably slept like a baby last night. "Good! T'Pol, tell them what the third shift found last night." 

"We have located a planet several lightyears from here, and Captain Archer wishes to explore it. It is similar in size to your solar system's fourth planet, and appears to have an atmosphere comparable to the desert climate of Vulcan." 

"I think it'll be a good chance to get some shore leave in," added the captain. "We haven't had any planet stays in a few months, and I don't know about the rest of you, but I like to stretch my legs every once in a while." 

T'Pol raised an eyebrow slightly, and Hoshi fought the urge to smile at the Vulcan's obvious annoyance with the excitable captain. "We will reach the planet in two days," she said flatly. "Now, for orders of normal business..." 

She began to speak with Commander Tucker about the status of some repairs and maintenance he was performing, and Hoshi stopped listening. Malcolm's eyes were still fixed upon her; his pale face and shadowed eyes gave Hoshi the distinct feeling that something dead was looking at her, and she shuddered involuntarily. 

Cut it out, Lieutenant, she thought. You're creeping me out. 

"Ensign Sato," said T'Pol. "Have you made any progress on the realignments to the translator?" 

"Er...oh, yes, yes, I finished them yesterday, Sub-Commander," she said. Suspecting that she'd missed quite a bit of conversation, she was relieved when T'Pol turned away, satisfied with her answer, and began asking Reed about the phase cannons. 

"You sure you're all right?" said Trip as T'Pol dismissed them all. 

"Yes, I'm fine," said Hoshi. If there was one thing she hated, it was people asking the same question over and over again when they already knew the answer. "I'm a little tired, Commander, but it won't interfere with any of my duties, I assure you." She hadn't meant to sound quite so annoyed, but it worked. Trip, looking a little hurt, nodded and ducked into the turbolift. 

She sat down at her station, and began to catalogue the transmissions that had arrived during the night shift. A message popped up on her screen before she had done even three of them, though. 

You're having nightmares? Malcolm was watching her like a hawk. It was a good thing neither T'Pol nor Archer were on the bridge just then, because Hoshi gave him such a glare that he visibly recoiled. She wondered at herself, and wondered why everything seemed to irritate her this morning. Usually she was pretty good at not being cranky. 

Is that any of your business? she sent back. 

He looked up, and she was again struck by how very pale he was. What kind of nightmares? People talking nonsense about waiting for you, and not being able to breath? She was so astonished that she forgot to be annoyed. You're having those, too? 

For several nights now, three or four times a night. You look like I feel. That's why I wondered. I heard a few people describing the same scene, too, but I don't think anyone else has been having them so frequently. 

So she did have raccoon eyes. I wonder what's going on? He didn't have a chance to reply, because T'Pol returned to the bridge. "Lieutenant Reed, I would like you to look over some of these figures. The targeting sensors seem to be out of alignment again, according to Ensign Hart's report from yesterday. Report to the armory. She will assist you there." 

He nodded, and met Hoshi's eyes for a second before disappearing into the turbolift. She read his last message and shook her head slightly. It rather ached. 

Whatever it is, (read Malcolm's message), I don't think it's a good thing. 

"How do these manage to go out of alignment so bloody often?" growled Reed, smacking the console with the palm of his hand. He'd gotten them back working again only a few days ago, and now they were down again. Something must be throwing them out of whack, because even Starfleet's systems shouldn't go offline this much. 

The armory was finally nice and quiet; he'd sent all his team off to get lunch because he knew he was on edge more than usual, and had just about reached the breaking point. If he wasn't so tired... 

But he didn't want to go to sleep again. He couldn't find a word strong enough to express how much those damned nightmares frightened him. Silly, really, since they were just the brain's expellation of random images, weren't they? 

"I've been having nightmares," said Hoshi Sato's voice, slightly annoyed, inside his head, and he hit the console once again, still angry. To his surprise the targeting scanners beeped, the screen flickered, and everything popped up again in perfect working order. 

Reed shook his head in disgust, not sure whether to be relieved or annoyed, and headed for the mess hall himself. Something to eat would probably help his mood, and he couldn't remember if he'd finished breakfast. Maybe the problem was only with the screen, he mused, and it was displaying the coordinates wrong when they were really right. He'd set Johnson on it after lunch. Reed himself couldn't take any more technical problems. 

"What's up, Malcolm?" chirped Trip, striding up alongside of him in the corridor. "How are the targeting scanners?" 

"Bloody things can't decide whether they work or not," said Reed shortly. "One moment they don't and the next they do." 

"Geez, what's the matter with you now?" said Trip. "Hoshi was all touchy this morning, too." 

"I'm tired," Reed replied. "I apologize if I've been a little grumpy." 

"Ah, don't worry, I'll cheer you up," said Trip, whacking him between the shoulders. "What are friends for?" 

"What indeed?" Reed muttered under his breath, but he allowed Trip to steer him into the mess hall line. 

"Hm, chocolate pie," said Trip. "Not as good as pecan but still pretty delicious." Why did everyone else seem so very perky, Reed wondered. Only T'Pol, seated in the corner reading padds, was acting normally, but then, she wouldn't be perky if her life depended on it. 

His head began to ache, and food didn't seem like such a good idea anymore, but he followed Trip to a table and sat down next to Travis Mayweather. 

"Anything interesting happen on the bridge, Travis?" asked Trip. Malcolm, feeling faintly nauseous, pushed his mashed potatoes around the plate. 

"Nah. T'Pol keeps getting more and more readings on that planet. If I didn't know better I'd think she was excited. She says it's a lot like Vulcan, and she keeps announcing all the climate scans and stuff." 

"Maybe she's homesick," said Trip. "Darn planet. I hate deserts." 

"Oh, there's a couple of temperate belts in the far north that look pretty decent," said Travis, shoveling a forkful of stew into his mouth and swallowing without seeming to have chewed at all. "Couple of lakes, too, but no big oceans or anything." 

Good, thought Malcolm, but he didn't say anything out loud. He took a slow bite of his own stew and chewed slowly. 

"Hey, we can go swimming. How about that, Malcolm? That sound good?" said Trip. "Malcolm? M-a-l-c-o-l-m..." 

Reed swallowed his mouthful, and wondered what Trip had just said. His head was pounding, and he pushed the plate away, deciding that maybe a nap was a good idea for the last half-hour of lunch. He started to get up and froze as a thousand little voices began to murmur around him. 

"We've been waiting for you, Malcolm Reed," they whispered, and Reed groaned. 

"I've got a bit of a headache," he stammered, realizing that both Trip and Travis were staring at him, and hurried out of the mess hall. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them both get up and start towards him, but he ducked into a side corridor and waited until they'd passed. 

"Malcolm...malcolm...MALCOLM...MaLcOlM!!!" echoed the voices. Perhaps he was going insane. He couldn't see the corridor around him anymore, and they wouldn't shut up. 

"Shut up!" he said. Going insane. Bloody, bloody, bloody...Malcolm, Malcolm, can you hear us, Malcolm...Malcolm! 

"Malcolm!!!" 

He found Hoshi bending over him, her hands on his shoulders. "Hoshi," he said. "Lovely day, isn't it?" Why was he on the floor? He couldn't remember. 

"That's it, we're going to Sickbay," she said, and hauled him onto his feet. "I couldn't make you answer me for five minutes. You were just staring and staring. I don't think you were even blinking." 

"Five minutes?" 

"And I have no idea how long you were there before I found you!" she said. "I was going to sickbay anyway." She stopped and stared at him, openmouthed. "It wasn't..." 

"Were you hearing them, too?" asked Malcolm. "I can't seem to make them go away even when I'm awake now." 

The turbolift hissed open, and Hoshi steered him onto it. She looked so tired, Malcolm noticed, and he knew he probably looked exactly the same. "You said you heard some other crewmembers talking about nightmares," she asked, and it took him a moment to focus enough to understand the question. 

"Oh, yes. I heard a few of my staff talking about their nightmares a few days ago. They described the same situation, but no one's said anything beyond that one conversation. And they don't look very tired, either." "Everyone seems so damn perky," said Hoshi. "I keep thinking it's just me, though." 

"Do you know I've never heard you swear before?" said Malcolm, dazedly amused. 

"What, you think I don't?" said Hoshi, sounding annoyed. 

"It's just funny." 

"Oh, good lord. Did you hit your head on something?" 

Phlox looked up as they entered sickbay. "You hit your head on something, Lieutenant?" 

"No," said Malcolm. 

"What seems to be the problem, then?" 

"Er..." 

"Nightmares," Hoshi put in, before Malcolm could think of a way to explain. "He's been having nightmares. And I've been having the same ones." She explained about the voices and the suffocation, and the eyeless skull. 

"And then I found Malcolm in the hallway, staring into space, and I couldn't rouse him," she finished. 

"How very peculiar," said the doctor, pulling out a scanner. "If you could sit down, please, I will take some scans and see if I can determine a cause." 

They sat on one of the biobeds. Phlox clucked and hemmed and murmured, switching through several different scanners. "I can find nothing wrong, physically, with either of you beyond a lack of energy," he said. "You need a good night's sleep, but otherwise you are both perfectly healthy." 

"No kidding," murmured Malcolm, sounding very much like Trip all of a sudden. The doctor frowned at him. 

"I can give you some medications to take that will put you in deep sleep, below REM level," said Phlox. "It won't have quite the same effect, though, because humans are quite dependent on dreams, whether you remember them or not, to fully rejuvenate. Nightmares aren't REM, strictly speaking, but--" 

"Why are we both having the same dreams?" interrupted Hoshi. 

"I don't know. If you'd let me, I would like to keep you both here for observation while you sleep." 

"Tonight?" asked Malcolm. 

"Right now, Lieutenant. In any case you're both severely overtired, and as Chief Medical Officer of this vessel, I would recommend a day for rest even without these odd nightmares." 

"Can you please not tell the Captain the real reason?" said Malcolm. 

"I can tell him you've both contracted a minor virus, if you like," said Phlox. "Why?" 

"Er...nightmares...they're sort of a little child type of problem," Reed said, ears reddening. 

"How peculiar," said Phlox. "You feel this threatens your status as a strong healthy male, do you not?" He was obviously perfectly serious, with a scientist's curiosity; Hoshi, however, suddenly turned red and started coughing. It sounded suspiciously like giggling. 

"Just tell me where to lie down," said Malcolm, turning red himself.


	2. CHAPTER 2--Night Terrors

CHAPTER 2--Night Terrors

"Very soon, Malcolm Reed," they whispered, and a flood of giggles echoed through the mists. "Very, very soon." 

Go away, please, just bloody go away, he said, screaming so hard he thought his lungs would burst, but not a sound came out of his mouth. I need my beauty sleep! 

"Very soon," murmured the myriad of voices, still giggling. "Very, very soon. Come to the Falling Rocks, and you will see. We will show you." 

Go away, please, he cried. But they pressed closer in, crowding around him, great dark figures with only holes where their eyes and mouths should be. Water poured over their shoulders and knocked him flat, and they held him down until he could not breathe any longer. 

Bloody hell. 

"Were you experiencing one of the nightmares you described, Ensign?" 

Hoshi groaned and pulled the pillow over her head. "Every single time I wake up, they've killed me in a different way, Doctor," came her muffled voice. "Every single time!" 

"How did you die this time?" asked Phlox. He swept a scanner over her head and shoulders and frowned. 

"Erghh... bloody hell!" shouted Malcolm suddenly from the next bed, and sat bolt upright, shivering. Blinking furiously, he turned and saw Hoshi and Phlox staring at him, and put his head in his hands. 

"This is very curious," said Phlox. "These brain wave patterns are nothing like normal sleep. It's almost as if you're awake and highly agitated, but there's no bodily involvement at all. None of the natural danger instincts, like adrenaline or increased heart rate, have kicked in at all." 

"Ugh--I drowned," said the lieutenant, pale and hollow-eyed. 

"I fell into an abyss," Hoshi told him. "Last time I was strangled, and the time before that I think I exploded." 

"Better than drowning every single time," growled Malcolm. "Did they tell you to come to the Falling Rocks, too?" 

"No. What are the Falling Rocks?" 

"I have no idea." Some color was returning to his face. The doctor, still looking bemused, had stopped scanning them and was staring at the monitors. He shook his head and frowned deeply. 

"I cannot figure this out at all," he said softly. "There is something definitely happening here, but I have no idea what it is. That REM suppressant had no effect at all." He sighed and opened his mouth to say something more, but the doors to Sickbay hissed open at that moment. Captain Archer strode in and gave all three a wide grin. 

"You two feeling any better? We'll be arriving at the planet in about six hours, so recuperate quickly!" 

Neither Malcolm nor Hoshi answered him. "I have not been able to fully assess their condition, Captain," Phlox said. 

Archer raised an eyebrow in an unconscious imitation of T'Pol. "What's wrong? You said something about a minor virus, didn't you? Are they in any danger?" 

Hoshi gulped and shifted slightly. The captain caught the movement and turned towards her. "What's going on, Hoshi?" 

"Sir, I don't think we should go down to that planet," said Malcolm unexpectedly. Archer's gaze swung around from Hoshi and fixed itself on the armory officer. 

"Why not, Lieutenant?" 

"Er...We've both been having dreams, nightmares really." He quickly explained the situation, telling about the voices and drowning. Hoshi could see his ears turning red, and she rather wished that this conversation was not taking place with both of them in their pajamas. "And they've been getting worse," Reed added. "The closer we get to that planet, the worse they get. Even when we're--er, I'm--awake they're talking." 

"You realize, Malcolm, that I'm not going to cancel shore leave for everyone just because you two are having dreams," said the captain. 

"No, sir," he replied, biting his lower lip. "I don't expect that, sir." 

"Can you do anything for them, Doctor?" asked the captain. 

"I'll have to run some more tests," he said. "I do not think, however, that it would be a good idea for these two at least to visit the planet, and I would recommend caution for everyone else going." 

"Of course," said Archer. "I'll come back and check on you later. Do what the doctor says. That's an order, Lieutenant Reed," he added, seeing Malcolm's shoulders slump. "No going to the armory." 

Hoshi pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned on them as the captain left. Reed sighed audibly and caught her eye, looking miserable. 

"I've run all the scans I can," said Phlox. "Why don't you get dressed and get something to eat? I need to analyze the data, but I don't need you here to do it." Hoshi smothered a giggle as Malcolm fairly leapt off the bed, uniform in hand, and charged toward the other room to change. She changed more slowly, and by the time she was ready, Reed was practically hopping from foot to foot with impatience. 

"Report back here in three hours," called Phlox as they left. "No duties! That means you, Mr. Reed!" 

"Bugger," said Reed quietly once they were out in the hall. "I need to check on something in my, er, quarters. I'll meet you in the mess." 

"You heard the doctor, didn't you?" 

"No, what did he say?" He turned quickly, winking at her, and strode down the corridor in the direction of the armory. "I won't be long." 

Hoshi shook her head and went the other way to the mess hall. She felt better than the day before; the doctor's sleep aid had done that much, at least, but she couldn't shake the terrible residue of the nightmares. Her brain itself felt fuzzy. 

The mess hall was empty, breakfast having taken place an hour ago. Some scrambled eggs, a few pancakes, and a few pieces of toast were still left. Hoshi took the scrambled eggs for herself, and grabbed the pancakes and a jar of peanut butter for Malcolm. She could hear Chef humming to himself in the kitchen; it sounded familiar, but she couldn't place the melody. 

Someone had left a pen and several padds sitting on one of the tables, and Hoshi began to doodle on the napkins while she waited for Reed. Falling Rocks, she thought. A cave, perhaps, and boulders piled up all around it. A few desert plants, maybe a pathway up to the entrance there. She'd never really been much of an artist, but she felt like drawing, for some reason. 

On a whim she drew a figure standing in the doorway, and did not realize it looked like Malcolm until he sat down across from her. 

"Bloody targeting scanners," he said. "I gave them a good whack yesterday and they started working again. And they're still working, amazingly enough." He slathered peanut butter on the pancakes and popped one whole into his mouth. 

"You look like you're feeling better," said Hoshi. 

"I keep thinking of all the time I wasted trying to go about the proper engineering way and all it needed was a good kick to the console," he said. He did look better. The raccoon circles under his eyes were nearly gone, and he wasn't pale as a ghost anymore--now he was just plain pale. 

"Falling Rocks," Hoshi said. "Do you think that's on this planet we're going to?" 

"That's what they said," Malcolm said, biting off a hunk of pancake. "Falling Rocks." He swallowed and looked grave all of a sudden. "Do you think there could be something there, something that's calling us?" 

"I don't know," Hoshi said. She fiddled with the napkin and looked at the picture she'd sketched. 

"That's pretty good," Malcolm said, reaching across the table. "Falling Rocks, is it?" 

Hoshi looked at it again. "It is good," she said, surprised. 

Reed cocked his head at her. 

"No, I mean, usually I can't draw to save my life, but--well, look at it. It looks like something real." 

"It's them," said Malcolm. "Those voices. They won't get out of our heads, even when we can't hear them." He crumpled the napkin in his hand and tossed it down on the table. 

Hoshi put her head in her arms on the tabletop. "I'd think I were going crazy, if you weren't dreaming the same things." 

"So would I." 

"Maybe we are going crazy, anyway. You and me, Malcolm, just a pair of complete lunatics with voices in our heads." 

"Oh, please." 

"What? You don't think it's possible?" 

"I didn't say anything," said Malcolm. "I think it's completely possible." 

"You said 'oh, please,'" said Hoshi, lifting her head. 

"No, I didn't--what the--?" Malcolm rose out of the chair and stared past Hoshi. She swung around in her own chair. 

"Your fragile minds, oh dear. Human minds." He had no eyes; he simply gazed down at the two officers with empty, bottomless sockets. "So very fragile. You can create an entire world in your own heads, or refuse to acknowledge the real one even when it's staring you in the face." 

Malcolm froze, his eyes wide, and Hoshi let out a small squeak without meaning to. 

"We are close enough now that we can talk to you directly, without having to worry about natural mental defenses. Quite a pair you two are, here. We need you." 

"Why do you need us? What are you going to do to us?" asked Malcolm. Hoshi could barely hear his voice, it was so soft. In any other person she would have taken it for fear; in Malcolm, she knew it to be deadly cold fury. 

"Nothing you could comprehend right now, my dear little humans." 

"You killed us in our dreams," said Hoshi. "Over and over again." 

"You drowned me," said Malcolm, still in thar preternaturally calm voice. 

The visitor smiled. "Nothing at all, my dear little humans. We've been waiting for you. Go to Falling Rocks. You will know the way." 

And he vanished, leaving no trace behind. 

"What the bloody hell is going on?" shouted Reed, slamming his fist down on the table. 

"I suppose we'll find out," said Hoshi, "when we get to the planet. Six hours, and we'll know." She felt calm seeping through her body, and couldn't figure out if it was from shock or from ambivalence. Nothing mattered, really; she knew that for certain. 

She looked up at Malcolm and saw that his eyes still burned with hidden anger. "Don't worry," she said. "It will be all right, you'll see." She reached to touch his arm in comfort. He jerked away as if she'd scalded him and began to shuffle backwards from the table. 

"You're theirs," he said. "Fight it, Hoshi, fight it." 

"Don't worry, Malcolm," she told him. "It will be all right." It would, she knew. There was nothing to worry about. 

She looked at the napkin again. 

"What a lovely picture," she said. "I'd like to go there someday." 

That was not Hoshi, he knew. What were they doing to them? He rushed from the dining room, heading for Sickbay. Phlox might be able to help him, give him some sort of telepathic suppressant. 

It seemed perfectly clear, Malcolm thought, hurrying through the corridors. Some kind of sadistic experiment, some test of communications equipment; maybe they want our brains like when that ship got Travis, he thought. 

"Where are you going, Malcolm?" said the stranger, blocking his way. He reached out a hand to the lieutenant. 

"Get away from me," said Malcolm, ducking it. But it didn't seem so important to run anymore. He was in danger, wasn't he? No. No, he couldn't be in danger. There was no one here that posed a threat. 

"That's right," said the stranger, and vanished once more. Malcolm turned around and found Hoshi smiling complacently at him. 

"Isn't this a lovely place?" she said, holding up the napkin. "Maybe there will be a place like it on the planet when we get there." She gazed dreamily into space. 

"Yes," replied Malcolm, and smiled. "Shore leave sounds wonderful. What a lovely place." A short, high giggle echoed around the corridors as the two officers wandered away. 

"We can't wait for you to come."


	3. CHAPTER 3--Sleepwalking

CHAPTER 3--Sleepwalking 

"We are approaching the planet, Captain," T'Pol said into the comm. There was a brief pause, and then an answering, "Thanks, Sub-Commander," and a muffled yip from Porthos. She shut the comm off and looked up at the viewscreen. 

"Enter standard orbit, Ensign," she told Mayweather. He nodded and tapped at the controls. 

"We're in stable orbit," he said after a moment. "So when do we start going down for shore leave?" 

"As soon as the captain deems it safe," said T'Pol. 

"Oh, so right away then," said Mayweather under his breath. T'Pol cocked an eyebrow at him and chose not to comment. 

"Are you in the first group to go down?" she asked him. Travis nodded. 

"Yeah, Trip and I are going scuba diving. I've never been before." 

"It should be an interesting experience," T'Pol said. 

"What are you going to do?" 

She raised the eyebrow again. "I plan to explore several of the desert areas. This planet is very similar to Vulcan, and I am intrigued to do a comparative study." 

The corner of his mouth quirked. "Sounds very... interesting," he said. "Have fun." 

The turbolift doors opened, spilling out the captain and Trip. "So, ready to go diving?" Trip said, grinning at Travis. "T'Pol, you should come. It'll be a riot." 

"Thank you, but I have already made plans." 

"Which is her way of saying, I'd rather be on the other side of the planet from you, Charles Tucker," said Trip in an undertone to the helmsman. T'Pol did not think he intended her to hear and wondered once again if these humans knew she had superior auditory abilities. 

"It looks great," said Archer. He pressed the comm button. "First shore leave, get to the shuttlepods in one hour!" 

T'Pol nodded as he grinned at her, giddy as a little boy, and began to do a last check of her station before she let the second-shift shore leave officer take over. 

"Captain!" she said sharply. "Someone has just activated the transporters." 

"Maybe someone couldn't wait," said Archer, but he was not smiling anymore. "Who was it?" 

She ran through the internal sensors. "I cannot tell, sir. The sensors are blanked out around the transporter pad." 

"Get someone down there," said Archer, automatically looking over at the empty tactical station. T'Pol raised an eyebrow and gave the order herself. 

"There it is again," he said, looking over her shoulder. "Two people beamed down? Why? They couldn't wait for the shuttles?" 

"Rostov to Captain Archer," said a voice from the comm. 

"Go ahead, Rostov," said Archer. 

"We just got down here, and caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Reed just as he disappeared. There's no one else." 

"Who transported him?" 

"He set it to delay five seconds while he got into position, sir. The settings are still on the console. But we can't tell where he went. It's all scrambled." 

"Someone else went, too," Archer replied. "Any ideas who it--damn. I know who it was." He pressed the comm again. "Archer to Ensign Sato." 

Silence. The captain hit the wall with a fist and ran into the turbolift. "Shore leave is cancelled until further notice," he said just as the doors closed. 

T'Pol, sitting down again, quickly scanned the ensign's quarters. No one was there, but she was expecting that. "Please return to your stations, gentlemen," she told Trip and Travis, both standing up and ready to follow the captain. 

"What the hell is going on?" Trip said, and privately T'Pol echoed the sentiment. Perhaps this planet was not as innocuous as it first appeared. 

"Doctor?" 

"Captain? Can I help you?" 

Archer glanced around Sickbay. "Did you find anything in the scans you took of Malcolm and Hoshi?" 

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "Why?" 

"They just used the transporter to go down to the planet. I need to know what's wrong, Doctor. I don't give a damn about patient confidentiality when my crew is in trouble." 

The doctor reddened slightly. "I can't help you, sir. I'm afraid that Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Sato came in and both told me they were feeling fine again. I couldn't find a thing in the scans so I took their word for it." 

"There's nothing there? Nothing at all?" 

"Nothing, Captain." The doctor shook his head, mouth agape, and pulled up the scans on the monitors. "Absolutely nothing. That in itself is odd, because their bodies both completely rejected the REM suppressant that I gave them in order to try and prevent these nightmares." 

"Damn it, Phlox, I wish you had told me what was going on from the start," said Archer, hitting the wall in frustration. 

"Mr. Reed expressed a wish that I tell you nothing," Phlox said. "I cannot go against protocol like that, Captain, not unless I feel something is life threatening, and it did not seem a cause for that much concern." 

Archer shook his head and walked out of Sickbay, calling over his shoulder, "Go over those scans and make sure you haven't missed anything. I want to know what's going on this time." Phlox nodded but Archer did not answer as the doors hissed shut. 

What were those dreams about? thought Archer as he strode down the hall towards the transporter platform. Maybe there's a clue there; I'll go back and talk to Phlox again later and see if we can find anything. Why wasn't I more concerned earlier? Seems like everything I've done over the past few days is a little foggy, like I didn't really know what I was doing. 

"Any luck unscrambling the coordinates, Rostov?" asked Archer as he approached them. He shook his head. The other three officers looked up, stopping what they were doing. 

"We've been able to turn the sensors back on around here, but the only way we can think to find the Lieutenant is to send someone down in the same place. The coordinates haven't changed, they're just scrambled so we can't get a reading that we can understand." 

"I didn't know that was even possible, sir," put in Ensign Jamison, the engineer in charge of transport maintenance. "The time delay shouldn't be possible, either. He modified the system somehow." 

"Well, do you gentlemen fancy a little trip to the surface?" said Archer grimly. "Let's see where they went." 

Rostov and the two security personnel all gulped. Only Jamison nodded, to all appearances completely comfortable with the transporter. 

"Ensign, prepare to beam us down," said Archer, beckoning to the security team. They stepped up, looking uncomfortable. "Energize," he ordered, and the warm sparkles of demolecularization washed over them all. Archer caught a glimpse of Jamison's face and thought wryly that the ensign looked almost disappointed at not going. 

The landscape around them slowly came into view: rose-red desert, hot and bright under the gleaming sun, hardly a shadow to be seen. Two pairs of footprints headed off into the distance, towards a towering rock formation. 

"Sir," said Rostov, tapping Archer on the elbow. "I beamed down right on top of this." He handed the captain a crumpled napkin. Archer looked from it to Rostov, and smoothed it out. 

"It's just a scribble," said Archer, turning the drawing every which way to see if there was anything else. 

"I thought... I thought maybe it was where they were going," said Rostov. 

Archer looked out over the desert around them. "Okay. Then let's go there too." He tapped on his communicator. "We've found their trail, Enterprise. Beam down desert gear and supplies. We're going after them." A twinge of worry settled itself in Archer's chest. Only two people had beamed down, without any water at all. How long could they survive out there? He only hoped that the two would survive. He hoped Malcolm and Hoshi could take care of themselves long enough for Enterprise to find them. 

Reed, at the moment, however, was not taking care of anyone, least of all himself. He could not remember where he was, nor how he had gotten there. He'd apparently fallen during his mysterious journey, because the knee of his jumpsuit was ripped open and the skin painfully scraped. If there had been any light, it would have been easy for him to determine where he was. He didn't think it was Enterprise, even if the power had gone out, because the ground felt like rock, and it was far too cold. And there wasn't any space on Enterprise big enough for him to crawl without hitting any sort of walls. 

"Hello?" he called once again. "Hello?" He had no idea how long he'd been here, but he knew that he'd called at least six times since he'd woken up. No one had answered. He sat down again, shivering with cold, and wondered morosely how long it would take him to die of thirst. 

"Malcolm Reed," said a voice, soft but forceful, and it was so completely unexpected that Reed tried to stand up and tripped ungracefully over his own feet. 

"Hello? Who's there?" cried Malcolm. 

"You have come to us, Malcolm. Let yourself go." A tiny sigh swept through the cavern, echoing back and forth for an eternity. Malcolm's legs went limp and he tumbled onto his back, the cold of the rock beneath him seeping through his jacket. 

"Please, who are you?" Malcolm begged; he knew he sounded pathetic but he didn't care. His head pulsed and he was not sure whether it was pain or pleasure. Stars burst in front of his eyes, startling against the darkness, and he trembled convulsively. 

"Relax." His muscles abandoned him, rebelling against the controlling mind until he felt even his heart begin to slow and shudder and his mind go blank. His lungs strained and he knew that he was dying, but he could do nothing. 

"Now. Now reach out, Malcolm, reach out to us and find us in the darkness. Come out of there, come out of the confines of flesh and join us in the light!" And he felt himself float away, up through the unseen ceiling and into the light of the world above.


	4. CHAPTER 4--Daydreams

CHAPTER 4--Daydreams 

"Are we dead?" 

"Maybe. I think we might be. I felt like I couldn't breathe." 

"It's beautiful being dead, isn't it?" 

"Yes." 

"They've got to be in here," said Rostov. He stopped and took a long swig of water, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "The footprints don't go any farther." 

The captain gazed up above him at the odd rock formation. It looked like it was about to fall, but he could see from the weathering that the jutting pillar had been there for centuries. Desert plants rustled in the light, hot wind, not bothered at all by the grit in the air. 

"We've got flashlights and markers to leave a path with," said Harris, digging through his pack. "And it probably won't be so damned hot in there." 

Archer grinned in spite of the gravity of the situation. "It's a good thing Trip didn't come down with us, eh? He hates deserts." 

"I know, sir," replied Harris as he clambered up the slope to the cave entrance. "He complained about getting heatsick for three weeks!" 

The darkness inside provided a welcome respite from the glaring sun. "There's only one passage," said Rostov, swinging the flashlight around. 

"Then let's go," Harris said, striding ahead. 

"Angie!" called Archer over his shoulder. "Stay out here and keep an open channel with us so we can contact you if we get into trouble." Ensign Sender nodded and sat down on top of a boulder right outside the entrance. 

"Don't get lost down there, sir," she said, and Archer nodded back to her before following the two crewmen into the passage. 

"This isn't right, sir," said Harris after they had walked for about five minutes. "There should be side passages and variation in the width and height of the tunnel. This looks manmade...um, well, made, anyway." 

"There's a bigger cavern up ahead," said Rostov from ahead of them, shining the flashlight deep into the tunnel. "See the opening?" All of a sudden he let out a cry and dashed forward. 

"What is it?" shouted Archer, running after him. 

"Captain! I found them!" Rostov's light swung wildly around the cavern, giving Harris and Archer glimpses of stalactites glittering high above them. "Captain! They're not breathing!" 

"What?" Archer skidded to a stop over the prone figures of Hoshi and Malcolm. They lay shoulder to shoulder, eyes open and glassy. The knee of Reed's jumpsuit was ripped open, and the skin underneath scraped badly. Archer reached out and felt for a pulse on the side of Hoshi's neck, letting out a heavy sigh of relief when he found one. 

"It's very faint," he told the two crewmen. "We've got to get them out of here and back to Phlox as fast as possible." Rostov started to do artificial respiration on Lieutenant Reed, but nothing happened at all. He stopped, panting, and swung Malcolm over his shoulder, easily lifting the shorter man. 

"Come on," said Archer, picking up Hoshi, and they headed back towards the cave entrance as quickly as they could. 

"Malcolm?" 

"Hoshi?" 

"Where are we?" 

She looked around and saw only darkness. Curiously enough Malcolm, standing beside her, looked as if he were in bright sunlight. Instead of his Starfleet uniform he had on a blank white shirt and pants, rather like pajamas. Hoshi looked down at herself and found the same. 

She reached out and touched his shoulder and was curiously relieved to find it solid beneath her fingers. 

"Are we standing on anything?" Malcolm asked, gazing around. Hoshi followed his glance but found it quite unhelpful: the same blank emptiness surrounded them in every single direction. He stamped his foot down and tried to jump but didn't move at all. 

"What's the last thing you remember?" he said. Hoshi could see his fists clenching. She knew that Malcolm Reed was not a man who liked to be faced with a situation that he could not comprehend. Come to think of it, she didn't really enjoy that kind of problem, either. 

"Colors," she said. "Like we were flying through a painting. And the cave. Do you remember going into the cave like the one I drew?" 

"Just little snippets here and there," he said. "I remember the cave and the colors, but I remember it like you remember a dream that you don't really know what was happening after you wake up." He tried to sit down and shuddered. "There's nothing underneath. I can't feel a thing." 

Gingerly, Hoshi crossed her legs in the air and found that he was right. It was an eerie feeling, much worse than the lack of gravity in the sweet spot because at least there she could see the walls. Her brain couldn't seem to get a handle on the nothingness around them. "I want to get out," she said plaintively. "But we could walk and walk and never move from this spot and we wouldn't know it." 

Malcolm shuddered again. "We'll starve to death," he said. "At least it's not drowning." 

"Death," whispered a voice, and it echoed round the void until Hoshi could not bear it any long and screamed. The voice ceased immediately. Malcolm reached out and grabbed her shoulders. 

"Hoshi," he said firmly, though she could hear the hint of panic in his voice, "Hoshi, we must keep our heads. We must keep calm." 

"What is going on?" she cried, unwilling to calm down. She could feel his hands shaking on her shoulders, and that frightened her more than the ethereal voices: the unshakable Malcolm Reed was scared, too. "Where are we? Someone answer me, damn it! We heard you before! Say something useful!" 

"Very well," said the voice, but it was not a whispering echo this time. It came from a featureless humanoid figure, eyes and mouth merely gaping holes in the smooth white face. Hoshi choked back a little scream and felt Malcolm's hands tighten on her shoulders, not reassuring her in the least because they were trembling even harder. 

"We did not think it would be this difficult for you to adjust," said the figure. "We have never met Humans before." It held out a hand. "Come. I will lead you in." 

Malcolm glanced at Hoshi for a moment before taking his hands away. "Are you all right?" he said. 

"No," she whispered, and felt herself begin to tremble too, like a withered leaf clinging to the tree. "But I'm getting there." 

"Come," it said again. "Take my hands." 

"Are we dead?" Malcolm asked suddenly. 

If the figure had had eyebrows, Hoshi was sure that it would have cocked one at them in classic T'Pol style. "What is death? It is only an end. You are more alive now than you have ever been before." 

"You killed us," said Malcolm. "You killed us in our dreams." 

"We showed you the end. Now it is time for the beginning. Come with me." It beckoned slowly and began to walk away from them. 

"Why should we trust you?" asked Reed, eyes blazing. 

"Why shouldn't you?" it replied, not breaking stride. "Be cautious, and then you truly will die." 

Hoshi met Malcolm's worried eyes and nodded slowly. "Come on, Malcolm," she said, suddenly feeling braver. He looked around at the empty void and clenched his fists. "It's got to be better than being in here," she added, and took his hand. She pulled him after the figure, who stopped and waited until she had caught up. It took her hand, gazing into her eyes with pools of black darkness. 

"Do not let go," it said. The void around them began to sparkle and shiver, and then it cracked into a thousand pieces and fell like glass around them. Hoshi heard Malcolm gasp and gripped his hand even more tightly. For a moment she could feel her lungs aching and her blood pounding just like in the nightmares and then all at once the pain was gone. 

She sighed, amazed, as they were surrounded by light, living, pulsing light that filled her entire body. "It's beautiful," she breathed, forgetting entirely her fear. "We saw this before but not like this." 

"You did," it said, and now its voice had changed. "You did but we did not think to hold you and you nearly fell away from us. This time we will teach you. There are some of us here that did not know instinctively." 

Hoshi looked over at it, her ears singing with the mellifluous rise and fall of their guide's altered voice, and her eyes widened. The black eyeholes had disappeared, and she gazed into pools of wind and flame. The white of its face had been replaced by shimmering red and orange, and flowing golden hair curled softly about its--or rather, his, since it now had more masculine characteristics--face. "You are beautiful, too," she said. 

"You may call me Pyrrih," he said, smiling in response. "That was my name before I came here. You cannot say the real one yet." Hoshi felt, in her mind, a brief surge of pure emotion and knew that it was the essence of Pyrrih, his true name. She wished she could see it in its entirety. He squeezed her hand and let go. 

"What is this place?" said Malcolm. His voice sounded curiously high-pitched, and when Hoshi turned to look at him she saw a flickering ghost of an outline, like a wisp of smoke against the golden glow. His eyes blinked furiously, trying to make sense out of the indescrible surroundings. 

"It is my domain," said Pyrrih. "Come, Malcolm Reed. It will hurt but the pain is quick." He reached out a hand to Malcolm and the smoky image coalesced and then expanded outward in a great puff of color. 

"Malcolm!" cried Hoshi in amazement, for when he came through he was not the hawkish blue-eyed lieutenant anymore but a young child with silvery blue skin. Pale blue and green tints shone beneath the surface, swirling and moving like the sea, and his brown hair was now pure silver. It stuck up in tidy spikes just as before, though. 

"You look different," he said, and Hoshi could not help laughing. 

"You're one to talk." She looked down at herself; she was only the size of a child, too, and rose pink, lavender, and gold colored her skin. "I do look different." 

"I have helped you see each other as we will see you," said Pyrrih. "You have much to learn and much to accustom to. We are all as children when we arrive here." 

"What is this place?" asked Malcolm again. 

"It is Between," said Pyrrih. "Where have you always wanted to go, Malcolm Reed?" 

"Er...Vulcan, maybe," he replied. 

"Imagine Vulcan," said Pyrrih, smiling, and the golden light dissolved around them. When their eyes cleared they were standing on a reddish sandstone cliff, gazing out over the desert. A moon hung low in the dusky sky, and below them Hoshi saw a neat, symmetrical house and gardens. Two figures walked about, and she could see their pointed ears. 

"Is this really Vulcan?" she asked. Snatches of the Vulcan language carried through the air, and she heard "school" and "Tavel's teachers" quite distinctly. 

"Yes," said Pyrrih. 

"Would they be able to see us?" asked Malcolm, his eyes glittering like water under sunlight. 

"Not unless we wanted them to," said another voice. "And even then they would only see a Vulcan like themselves." 

"Ah! Thetik, welcome!" cried Pyrrih. "I have only just managed to get them Between." 

Thetik, tall as Pyrrih, did not shimmer; looking at him was like looking into a painting. Hoshi could see him stepping out of Van Gogh's Starry Night, the swirls were so similar. "Welcome, Hoshi Sato," he said kindly. "Are you finding it difficult to adjust?" 

"No, I don't think so," she replied. "I don't think I quite understand yet." 

"She is not having as much trouble as the male," said Pyrrih quietly. Malcolm had wandered to the edge of the cliff and stood gazing down at the Vulcan manor below. 

"I will help him," said Thetik. "I had just as much trouble adjusting when I first came here." He nodded to Hoshi and walked over to Malcolm, saying something that made Reed look up and shake his head. 

"Ah, little one," said Pyrrih, "that means that I will teach you. Shall we go? There is much to learn about Between and its people." 

Hoshi took his hand again, and a shiver of excitement ran up and down her spine. This, now, this was exploring. "Let's go," she said.


	5. CHAPTER 5--Empty Visions

CHAPTER 5--Empty Visions 

"Have you ever been here before?" Thetik asked, sweeping his arm out over the red desert of Vulcan. 

"Never," Malcolm said. "Am I really here now?" 

Thetik fixed a smudged yellow eye on him. "Do you believe you're here?" 

"Convenient, isn't it, that people who can control my dreams can also instantaneously transport from planet to planet over thousands of lightyears?" He knew precisely how snotty he sounded. He didn't care. "What's your real motive? Is everyone on Enterprise going to be brought here so you can kill us all?" 

"You are very suspicious," said Thetik with a sigh. "Your concern for your shipmates is touching but unnecessary. We shall do nothing to harm them." With Thetik's firm hand on Malcolm's shoulder, they turned away from the cliff and walked towards the rising sun, only just beginning to peek over the horizon. The landscape melted around them and blurred into smears like paint. 

"You are one of us now, Malcolm," said Thetik, "the travelers on the great paths between reality. We called to you, and you heard us, because your mind possessed potential for greater things." 

"I don't understand," Malcolm whispered as the whirl around them slowed and solidified into starry space. 

"Think of it as a separate dimension," Thetik said. "I know your scientists have postulated the existence of such things. Right now your mind is regulating what you see into what you can understand but in time your thoughts will adapt and change so you can see the dimension properly." 

His feet rested on nothing; he floated in space, alarmed because no air filled his lungs. Malcolm shook his head. 

"There are points where our realm and theirs overlap," said Thetik, and again the scenery shifted and changed into the cave called Falling Rocks. 

"We came here," said Malcolm. 

"Inside this cave a point exists where all dimensions are one. You crossed it and we helped you through. You nearly fell back again." Thetik squeezed his shoulder and then let go. 

Malcolm shook his head. "What if we didn't want to go?" he said. "Did you ask us?" 

"We need you," said Thetik. "We could not ask. You might have refused." 

Deep in the pit of his new, alien stomach, a cold knot began to form. He shivered, but forced his mouth into a smile. "Why do you need us?" 

"We have no way to reproduce other than finding minds with the potential to come Between," said Thetik, and clapped Malcolm on the back. "You are our hope, Malcolm Reed. 

He knew, without a doubt, that this smiling alien had lied to him. He had never been so sure of anything in his entire life. 

Malcolm said, "I see," and smiled back. 

"What do you mean, you can't do anything for them?" said the captain. 

Phlox sighed. He hated this part of the job. "I mean I can't do anything, sir," he said again. "They've responded to none of the treatments. The only thing keeping them alive is the life support machines I have them hooked up to. There's no brain activity, no conscious thought, no dreams, nothing." He glanced over at the two patients, still and silent in their biobeds, and felt a shiver run down his spine. Phlox was a good doctor; he knew it and the crew knew it. 

It was therefore unnerving to everyone to be faced with a medical problem that he could not handle, or even begin to decipher. 

Archer leaned against the wall and slowly, so slowly that Phlox wondered if it was on purpose, slid to the floor. "Is there any chance," he asked, coughed, and started again, "Is there any chance that they could wake up on their own?" 

"I don't know, sir," said Phlox. Not likely. Almost impossible, in fact, but he kept the thought to himself. "What would help, sir, is to have someone thoroughly search that cave to see if there is a pathogen or some kind of radiation that could have caused this." 

"Of course." Archer stayed on the floor for a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the two fallen crew members, and then slowly stood up, letting out a long sigh. "I'll get someone on it right away." 

"Send them down to me first," Phlox told him. "I'll give them radiation immunizations. They should wear environmental suits as well." The captain nodded and shuffled out of sickbay, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair. 

"/Well, Hoshi, I didn't think those nightmares were anything to worry about,/" Phlox said softly in Denobulan. "/I thought you both were exaggerating./" Gently he adjusted the monitors and looked down at the two pale faces. "/I'm so sorry./" 

He'd lost patients before, of course, but it never really got any easier. Carefully, he lifted the bat out of its cage and stroked its furry back. It purred, reminiscent of a human feline, and spread its wings out so he could pet it more easily. 

"/I'm so sorry,/" he said again, and shook his head. The bat chirruped. 

It never did get easier. 

Malcolm sat on a grassy knoll in Earth's New York, in the middle of Central Park. He'd never been there before; he'd never really thought about going, either, until Thetik showed him how to melt the currents of space and go anywhere he wanted. The painted Betweener (Thetik's name for his fellow denizens of the realm) had hinted at a further direction, in which one could travel back and forth in time. 

Yet Malcolm could already see that he would be tired of this very soon. He pulled his swirly silver knees up to his chin, and thought that this would be so much better if he could feel the grass beneath him, and the chilly wind nipping at his cheeks. He only knew the frosty bite of the wind existed because the passerby shivered and clutched at their coats, and wrapped their scarves more tightly about their necks. 

It would have been better if he could have smelled the meaty aroma of the hot dogs cooking in the street vendor's cart, or the coffee in the hands of businessmen striding quickly by. It would have been better if he were a tourist walking through the city with Madelaine or Trip or Hoshi or Travis or any of his friends, laughing and chatting about nonsensical little things. 

He saw this all immediately, and wondered at it. All his life he'd been someone who just sat on the fringe and watched, preferring the part of observer rather than participant unless it was something that truly mattered to him, like weapons or explosions. Or Enterprise; he'd only begun to really come out of his shell in the past few years on the ship he called home. 

Suddenly repulsed by the living city, he stood and reached out for more familiar surroundings: Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco. This offered little solace, since he still couldn't interact with anything. He was a ghost, nothing more, and ruefully he wondered if anyone could see him. 

An old acquaintance of his from Academy days walked past him in the hall, and Malcolm could not bear it any longer. Even if they could see him, they would not know who he was; all they would see was a little boy with silver skin and blue hair. He swished through Between and let the currents take him where they would, thinking of Hoshi and musing on what she was doing. 

"Malcolm?" said a voice, and he stopped. Hoshi stood next to him, shining pink and gold, and bemusedly looking at him. 

"Ah...I was looking for you," he floundered. She grinned and waved a hand at their surroundings. 

"This is Amagad. It's out in the Gamma Quadrant. It's a pretty large empire," Hoshi said gleefully. "I've almost learned their entire language, excluding a few odd regional dialects. Do you know they've managed to standardize their language, so that the entire empire speaks only one tongue? Of course it's different in little ways everywhere, but basically they have the same language for all their people." 

"Vulcans did that," Malcolm said. He didn't care, really, but she seemed so excited. 

"No, they have a standard tongue that they use for common things and for diplomacy and science, but there are at least fifty different languages still spoken on Vulcan, despite all the logic and teachings of Surak and everything," she said. "I would love to watch this develop and see how they did it. Pyrrih said it's possible to move back and forth in time, too." 

"Thetik said that, too." 

"I could see how they managed to standardize their language if I watched," said Hoshi, face tinged with excitement. She grinned and moved closer to the Amagadan, listening intently. 

"That's good," said Malcolm, not really knowing what to say, but she wasn't paying attention to him anyway. This was the wonderful Between, was it? Doomed to an eternity of exclusion. He swished the currents back and forth again, and felt his way to Enterprise. 

He knew it was a mistake as soon as the walls swirled into view. He saw crewmembers walking up and down the hall, speaking in quick, harried undertones, and wished with all his heart that he could be seen, be noticed, be anything as long as someone else acknowledged his existence. 

Trip walked by, and the look on his face sliced right into Malcolm's heart. We're dead, he reminded himself. We died in that cave to come here. He followed the engineer down the hallway, calling out Trip's name, but the man kept right on walking. 

"Trip!" howled Malcolm as the turbolift doors closed, and sank down to the floor when no response came. How could Hoshi see this as such an opportunity? 

This is hell, Reed thought bitterly. So curious that Hoshi, who was always such a people person, would not recognize the terrible emptiness of always watching and never doing, while he, the loner, saw it at once and hated it. Then again, perhaps it was not so curious. She didn't know how it felt to walk through life without waving and smiling at people. She was so caught up in her excitement that she hadn't yet noticed the absence of something that she took for granted. 

And he, of course, he had walked through his life watching all the time except in the case of weapons and security, and then he participated only to the extent of furthering knowledge. 

"I should bloody well fit in perfectly here," said Malcolm and looked down the empty corridor, gray and sterile and utterly devoid of life. He stood up and wandered aimlessly towards the turbolift, but of course the doors did not swish open for him. He could wait for a crewman to exit and hop on, but that would take too long. Closing his eyes, he pictured the bridge, and opened them to find himself staring Travis Mayweather in the face. 

To Malcolm's great surprise the ensign blinked and shook his head slightly, peering right at the spot where Reed stood. "Travis," he said, and then said it again, louder, when Travis glanced around and swept his gaze over T'Pol at the science station, Ensign Jado at communications, and Lieutenant Ayala at tactical. 

Malcolm remembered suddenly that Travis had complained of the nightmares; he'd only overheard the conversation in passing in the gym, and he'd been too embarrassed to ask the ensign about it in further detail. He'd only heard him mention it once, though, despite fervent eavesdropping from then on. 

"Travis? Can you hear me? Nod if you can!" 

But the ensign seemed to have decided that he was merely getting drowsy, because he stood up and addressed T'Pol, "Ship's in stable orbit, Sub Commander. I'm going to take ten." 

"Thank you, Ensign," she said, without looking up. Travis nodded to her, rather unnecessarily Malcolm thought, and quickly walked off the bridge. Reed sighed as he left. 

"You can't contact them," came Thetik's voice; Malcolm jerked around in shock and found the painted Betweener standing right behind him. 

"He had the potential to become this, too, didn't he," said Malcolm, jabbing a finger at Thetik. "Why not him?" 

"You really want to ask, why me?" 

He didn't answer, gritting his teeth in annoyance. They saw through him so easily. 

"Because he has only a little. He would truly die and not be able to come Between," said Thetik, and took Malcolm by the shoulder. "Come out of here, child. The Betweeners must have a certain mental fortitude. I do not know whether it is biological or magical. It simply is a fact. We can feel it when someone approaches one of the crossing points, like in Falling Rocks." 

"He almost saw me for a moment," said Reed, and fixed his eyes on Travis as he came back out of the turbolift. "He almost heard me." 

"Did you ever see a ghost, Malcolm Reed?" 

"No," said Malcolm. "Maybe once but I was probably imagining it." 

"That's all we are to them. Ghosts. Spirits. If you spent your life close to a crossing you would see them more. There have been a few on Earth over the years, but they move around and are very weak. None so strong as Falling Rocks, of course, so no one could pass through them like they can here." 

Malcolm swung his gaze away from Travis and glared at Thetik. "Why do you need us?" he asked abruptly. 

"We wish to increase our numbers, like any species," said Thetik. "You are a child of the Betweeners. Come away now and I will teach you more. You have only just begun your education, Malcolm Reed." He tightened his grip on Malcolm's shoulder as the fabric of space bubbled away. 

But as Malcolm vaporized into the current, he saw a figure like Thetik and Pyrrih, like Hoshi and himself, standing behind Travis Mayweather, watching him with great black hooded eyes. Before he could get a better look, though, the figure disappeared along with the rest of the ship. 

He wanted to call out a warning, but Thetik's grip tightened even more, and he was swept away Between, far from Enterprise.


	6. CHAPTER 6--Waking Up

Hoshi, reveling in her study of the Amagadan language, hardly noticed as Malcolm came and went. She could hardly believe the opportunity presented here; to be able to learn languages all the time and study them from conception to contemporary forms--it was a dream come true, to say the least. Pyrrih, quite pleased by her excitement, had shown her how to enhance her own memory so that she had perfect and total recall of any new facts she chose to learn. "You are a true scholar," he told her. "Just what we need here. We don't have anyone researching linguistics." 

She grinned and followed the green-skinned Amagadans through their town. The buildings reminded her somewhat of an architect from a few centuries ago, all geometric shapes arranged with perfect mathematical precision. She couldn't quite remember his name, Frank something or other, but it didn't matter. 

Ajatx, the leader of the group of children that she was trailing, stopped and shouted at the littlest ones skipping at the rear. "/Hurry up,/" cried Ajatx. "/We don't want to miss the kditiul ceremony!/" Ahh, this is heaven, thought Hoshi, and scanned through the mental list of adjectives that she'd compiled. Nothing matched, so Hoshi decided to follow them and see just what kind of ceremony this was. 

Pyrrih appeared beside her, a shining mist slowly coalescing into the shimmering golden Betweener, grinning proudly. "You have taken to our ways like a fish to water, Hoshi Sato. You make your teachers proud, young one." 

She swelled with pride at the compliment and grinned back. "This is amazing! I can't believe what I've learned already, Pyrrih! I could watch them forever!" 

"Do you want to rest? Or go anywhere else? We don't need sleep, technically, but we can idle our thoughts for a while and it is often a relief to do so, if you have been watching for long hours." 

"You showed me how to go from place to place, if I get bored," said Hoshi. "I'm not tired at all. Shall I come and find you in a bit?" 

"Oh, someone will find you, Hoshi. I will be busy for some time, so simply call for another and they will assist you if you need it." He smiled down at her and disappeared again. Quickly, so she didn't lose them, Hoshi dashed after the children and caught up with them just as they reached a great stone temple carved with symbols and signs on every available surface. 

Wonderful, sighed Hoshi happily, simply wonderful. I could stay here forever. 

"What are you hiding?" cried Malcolm, struggling to get away from the stronger Thetik. He could not wrench away from the hand on his shoulder, no matter how hard he tried. 

It was not because Thetik was physically stronger; Malcolm had enough combat training to defeat an enemy without regard to size. No, he could feel the true strength of the Betweeners working on him--the mental, which he had little experience with, and with which Thetik could effortlessly hold him all day. 

"What do you mean?" Thetik said. "Why are you struggling so?" But the emotionlessness of his voice merely indicated to Malcolm that he wasn't even trying to deny it anymore. 

"Who was that, standing behind Ensign Mayweather?" Malcolm gave up for the moment. There was no way he could defeat this stronger mind by struggling. 

"It is a Betweener," said Thetik. Out of the corner of his eye, Malcolm saw the universe swirl and twist and form itself into Pyrrih. 

"What is the matter?" cried the golden Betweener. "Why do you fight us, when we give you such a great gift?" 

"Great gift?" Malcolm cried, his eyes narrowing. "Great gift? Bloody hell, you call that a great gift?" He pushed hard and fast against the bonds of Thetik's mind, and caught him by surprise, so that Malcolm's own abilities shot out like a bullet from a gun. He swirled away in space, running for Enterprise, and called over his shoulder, "Nothing but watching for eternity? That is not a gift!" 

Without really having picked a destination, he spun out of control onto the deck of the ship, through it, and finally stopped himself in Sickbay, halfway through the floor already. 

Two people lay on the diagnostic beds. Gorge rising in his throat, Malcolm slowly reached out to his own body, death-pale and silent but for the beeping of the life-support monitors attached all over. His proper body, now, not the silly child-form he wore now, with brown hair and pink skin and blue eyes that belonged to him and not to some creation of the mind of a Betweener. 

"You need not have seen that," said a voice behind him. Pyrrih, of course, and Thetik with him, as Malcolm found when he turned around. 

"You are dead," said Thetik bluntly. "It is only the technology that keeps your heart beating. You will never wake up again, Malcolm Reed." 

He shook his head wildly, and let himself fall through the deck plating again, down into decon and the shuttlebays. A group of crewmen disembarked slowly from Shuttlepod Two, removing their helmets without exchanging a word. They carried scanners and equipment cases. For finding us, realized Malcolm with a jolt. They found us and they don't know what's happened. 

But he found it odd that they did not speak to each other, not a single word, and so he went closer to them. 

"Go away," said Ensign Harris quite firmly. "It is not your time." 

For a moment Malcolm thought that the ensign was speaking to one of the other officers, but then he realized that the words had been directed at him. He peered closer and then recoiled, stumbling backwards across the shuttlebay. 

"Get out! That isn't yours!" he cried at them. All of them, every single one, had a Betweener shining from their eyes, looking straight at him. "Get out!" he shouted again, and then ran as they advanced menacingly, quite forgetting that they could not attack him until he'd gone three decks higher up. 

"Are you quite done?" said Pyrrih, keeping pace with him easily. Malcolm abandoned all caution and went outside, on the hull of the ship, trying to escape into the emptiness of space. Deep in his rational mind he knew it would ultimately be fruitless to try and escape; instinct, however, had gotten the better of him. 

"You see it," said Thetik from his other side, an almost pleading tone in his voice. "You see it right away, when it takes most of us centuries or even millennia to realize that watching forever is no substitute for truly living, even for a short time. We will not harm them, Malcolm Reed. Their minds will create a haven for them to live in while we experience life." He shivered, and added, "And death, of course," caressing the word with his lips until the sound became rich and sensual. "All things must end, Malcolm Reed, in the natural universe. But we, who come from the natural universe, do not end in the unnatural realm Between." 

"You are stealing people's lives!" cried Malcolm, sinking to his knees. He felt a tear (an imaginary tear, nothing is real, his rational mind said cruelly) slip down his cheeks and drop onto Enterprise's hull. But his fingers, seeking to wipe it away, felt no wet, and his tongue, reaching out for the moisture left on his cheek, tasted no salt. He did not exist in that world, after all. 

"We want lives of our own. Is that so much to ask?" said Pyrrih. "It has been done this way for aeons. When beings without the potential to experience Between come near a portal, we call to them and bring them through so that we may experience the universe." 

"And we were a trap, eh?" said Malcolm. "You called Hoshi and me there so that someone would follow and go through the portal. And then you could bring others down too, until all of Enterprise is gone and you are in their places." 

"Yes," said Thetik simply. 

"Couldn't you just have killed me?" cried Malcolm. 

"We cannot kill. There is no end Between," said Pyrrih. He glanced at Thetik. 

"But there is confinement," said Thetik, and turned away from Malcolm. "You are too much of a risk, Malcolm Reed. Goodbye." 

"NO!" screamed Malcolm, suddenly knowing what they were about to do. He tried to run, but Thetik and Pyrrih held him fast. 

"Do you know who we will be?" said Pyrrih softly. "Your captain and your commander. Your friends Jonathon Archer and Charles Tucker. Thank you, Malcolm Reed." 

"You bastards!" hissed Malcolm. Pyrrih merely smiled. 

And Malcolm felt their combined powers wrap around him, and throw him away from Enterprise once more, far away into that endless black emptiness he had experienced before coming fully Between. He screamed, furious, and ran until he could not take the emptiness, and then simply tumbled through the endless, featureless space, shouting his fury silently into the void. 

Hoshi, he wailed. Hoshi, please, you're the only one who can help me. Get me out of here, please, please, please... 

Hoshi, Hoshi, Hoshi, please, even watching forever is better than emptiness...Trip, Travis, Captain Archer, T'Pol, someone...please... 

Please...


	7. CHAPTER 7--Noontide

CHAPTER 7--Noontide 

Hoshi! 

She shook her head, annoyed, and looked around for the source of the voice. Was someone calling her? All she saw were Amagadans, completely unaware of her presence. 

Hoshi, please! 

"What is it?" she said, whirling around. And still no face greeted her, no source appeared. 

Hoshi... "Where are you, Malcolm?" she cried, catching a slight tinge of British on the word. He did not answer, and she strained her ears, trying to hear where he was calling her from. "Malcolm?" 

Grumbling at the interruption of her work, she reached out with her mind as Pyrrih had shown her and visualized Malcolm Reed. She expected to see the universe swirl and shift around her, but it stayed stubbornly still. 

A little voice in the back of her head began to sound alarm bells. Hadn't the Betweeners said that they could go anywhere that they wanted, no matter what? Where was he? 

She closed her eyes and tried again, and this time a wave of sensation swept into her head. When Hoshi opened her eyes she still stood in the Amagadan village, but she could feel a wisp of Malcolm, as she had felt Pyrrih's true name. His emotions, clear as if he had spoken out loud, tumbled back and forth from terror to panic to worry and back again. 

"Malcolm, what happened?" she muttered to herself. She held tight to the thread that was her friend and pulled as hard as she could. In a rush he came Between, flooding her mind with his thoughts and sense of self; for a moment she reeled backwards, unable to comprehend the entirety of a whole other person suddenly shoved into her own mind. Then the tide pulled back and she found herself staring at the silver-blue eyes of the child Malcolm had become. He gazed at her, not blinking, and collapsed to his knees, staring in shock. If she had not known better, she would have thought he was dead, just a corpse staring into eternity. 

Hoshi looked him up and down for a moment, watching him shiver, and then knelt and put her arms around him. His body stiffened and then relaxed; he looked up at her and shook his head. "You heard me," he said softly. 

"What happened to you?" she asked, letting go and sitting back on her heels. His eyes still had that blank, dead look in them; she shuddered involuntarily. 

"It doesn't matter. We have to get to Enterprise, if it's not already too late." 

"What?" He didn't answer, just stood up and grabbed her shoulder. The Amagadans fizzled from view; Hoshi, gasping at the audacity, reached out and stopped him. "I've got an opportunity I'll never get again, Malcolm! What's the matter with you?" 

"What's the matter with me? What's the matter with me? You really want to live without ever really touching anything again? You can hear and see but nothing else, and no one can hear you! What's the matter with me? What's the matter with you? Enterprise is in trouble!" 

She could feel him straining to go; she clamped down on his wrist and held him fast. "We're dead, Malcolm, don't you understand? We're DEAD. And you said it yourself, we can't touch anything and no one can hear us. Forget about Enterprise. It'll hurt too much to go back there when we can't even talk to our friends." 

He stopped struggling. "You do understand, at least a little," he said. Some of the dead look had left his eyes, replaced by smoldering, angry flame. "We'll be here, Between, able to watch anything but never do anything. It's like watching television. You can imagine you're in the show, you can imagine every character is your best friend and you're in every single adventure, but you're not really a part of it, ever. You can trick yourself into it for a while, but eventually the show is canceled, or the television gets turned off and you have to face the reality that you can never be a part of that world. Do you understand? Even if it's just instinctively?" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered. "Leave me alone, Malcolm." She let go of him and turned back to the Amagadans, willing the lieutenant away with all her strength. 

"Enterprise is in trouble, Hoshi," he said. "I don't know how long... how long I was in the void, but we might still be able to save them. The Betweeners are taking our friends' lives away from them. Possessing them. Like those cloud creatures, but much more permanent. And we'll die for real, because they'll cut off the life support that's keeping our bodies alive. We might still get to go back, Hoshi, but I need your help." 

She shook her head. "Go away, Malcolm. I'm happy here," she said, not turning around. 

His anger reached into her mind; it hung in the air, almost palpable, even after he vanished. She shivered and sat down next to a woman who sang as she dug in her garden. Hoshi could not catch the words; the rhythm was too fast. She wanted to ask the woman what the lyrics said. 

But of course she could not. She silently chided herself for forgetting, and stood up, running away in time with the beat of the music, running from Amagad and out into space, dodging the stars as she passed. 

"You came," said Malcolm softly as she slowed and stopped. "I didn't think you would." 

The darkness around them reminded her unpleasantly of the void; Malcolm, beside her, still trembled, and she could feel his fear as strongly as she had felt his anger. "What's happening?" 

"There," pointed Malcolm. "This is the portal where Between and our universe become one. When people pass through this portal they are open to the Betweeners. I don't think they've done too many people yet." He didn't say, and she didn't ask, how they'd get the Betweeners out of the people who were already possessed. There was enough to think about without adding that to the list. 

"Look! The captain!" he said, grabbing her arm. Leading the way into the cave with gleaming flashlights were Captain Archer and Commander walking as if he were only half-awake. Now she saw the Betweeners waiting just beyond the portal, and she wondered if they were aware of the two of them. Pyrrih stood at the front, with Thetik directly behind him. 

"They told me that they get Trip and Captain Archer," said Malcolm. "Come on, quickly, we have to stop them." He vanished and reappeared directly inside the portal; Hoshi followed in an instant, and behind them a shocked cry went up as the Captain and Trip Tucker stepped Between. 

"Leave them alone!" cried Malcolm, moving in front of them. He stepped backwards as Thetik advanced on him, animosity rolling off of him in waves. 

"You dare to steal this from us!" cried the painted Betweener, reaching a hand out to strike Malcolm away. The child and the adult faced off, frozen for an instant. 

And then Trip Tucker stepped through Malcolm and fell to the floor with a sudden gasp. Thetik gave a great gusty screech and faded away; gone but not dead. Hoshi glanced from Pyrrih to the captain. Both she and Pyrrih moved at the same instant, but Hoshi was quicker. 

The captain's self invaded her much the way Malcolm's had only a few minutes ago. She struggled and felt his consternation--Captain, I'm saving your life, you know-- and settled in beside him, looking from his eyes at the darkness of the cave around them. She felt his legs go limp, and made his arms shoot out to break his fall. 

Trip shouted, "Hey! Stop! Everyone get out of this cave, now!" She turned Archer's eyes to look and saw a pale light shining from the commander's face. 

The spell broke, and the crew suddenly realized where they were. Hoshi felt Archer's query, and said silently, Bear with me, Captain. He did not relax at all, anxiously demanding to know what was happening to his crew. 

She could not see the Betweeners, but she knew they were there, so she made Archer's legs walk clumsily toward the entrance. His body was a good deal larger than her own, and she did not know how to make it work. 

I'll do it, Hoshi, said Archer, and she felt his body break into a sprint. He blinked as they burst into the sunlight outside, shaking his head to rid his eyes of the afterimages. 

"No one is to go back into that cave," Hoshi made him say. "That's an order." Sorry, sir, don't write me up for impersonating a senior officer. 

You sound like Malcolm, he thought. I think I must be going crazy. 

No, sir, you're not. It's really me. 

A delusion would say that, wouldn't they? To make me believe it was real? 

She could see Trip Tucker, standing stiffly at attention, and wondered if Malcolm was letting him have any control at all. That expression and posture were pure Lieutenant Reed, and it looked very odd in place of Tucker's normal easygoing slouch. 

"Captain Archer, I must speak with you immediately," said Trip. Hoshi felt the captain shudder involuntarily at hearing Reed's clipped British accent come out in Trip's slow drawl of a voice. 

"Malcolm, it's me," said Hoshi. Archer struggled to regain control of his own words, but she kept a firm hold on him. 

"Hoshi?" 

Hoshi, what the HELL are you doing? said Archer furiously. 

"Yes. What are you planning to do?" 

"To be honest, I wasn't expecting to possess the bodies of our superior officers," he said. His face spasmed for a moment, and then Trip's own Southern accent came pouring out of his (their? thought Hoshi) mouth. 

"Get him out of my head, he's in my head, get out!" he shouted. Hoshi looked around through Archer's eyes and saw nearly the entire crew watching them. Hardly a surprise, she thought, because they were stuck down on a planet with nothing else to do. 

Hoshi, let me handle this, said Archer. That's an order, Ensign. She relinquished control and simply floated, feeling, hearing, and seeing everything he did, but doing nothing about any of it. Archer rushed over to Trip and grabbed his arms, shaking him roughly. "Trip, snap out of it. They're not going to do anything to us"--in his mind Hoshi felt his doubt: was this really her? Or Malcolm?-- "so don't struggle with him." He looked up at Trip's forehead. "Lieutenant Reed, you give Trip control at once. That's an order and if you don't follow it I'll bust your ass down to second class crewman and make you swim across one of the lakes on this planet!" 

"He said, aye, sir," said Trip, still tense but not panicked anymore. "And he said, that was a low blow, sir. What low blow?" 

"Never mind," said Archer. The entire crew was grouped around them, gaping. Hoshi, gazing out of Archer's eyes, saw six crewmen standing just at the fringes of the group, and saw the Betweeners in them. 

Can you see that, sir? she asked. 

I don't know what you're looking at, said Archer. 

They're possessed already. Harris, Vinich, VanHammond, Sepanik, York, and Wright. 

He ordered the six crewmen to come. They glanced at each other, then suddenly broke into a run away from the group. Phase pistol blasts took two down immediately, and then Trip sprinted off after them, half of the engineering team following in his wake. They fell one by one; Harris nearly made it to a large outcropping of rock, but finally fell as well. 

So how are we supposed to get out of here? asked Hoshi. Everyone's down on the planet. 

I remember a shuttle, thought Archer. It's all a haze, like someone told me to do something and I can't remember what. "Find a shuttle!" he yelled, and the crew scattered out across the planet. 

"We've found it!" came the yell a few minutes later, and Archer jogged towards them. Trip, sweat beading on his forehead, loped up and matched their stride. 

"I'm going to kill that snotty British bastard!" he growled at Archer. "Just keeps taking control away from me." 

"Well, it's just lucky they were dumb enough to let you come down here with a phase pistol," said Malcolm in Trip's voice. 

"AAGGHH! Stop doing that! I'll tell them what you want to say!" 

"In that accent?" 

"Malcolm," said the captain warningly, although Hoshi could feel him snickering under his breath. She wondered if he had always had that talent, and how often he laughed at all of them. 

Trip breathed a sigh of relief as they reached the shuttlepod. "Get them in first," he said (in his own voice), beckoning to the crewmen carrying the stunned Betweeners. "Malcolm says it would probably be faster if we transported people up rather than made lots of shuttlepod runs." 

"Where's the doctor?" asked Archer. "Ah, there you are, Phlox. You go up too. We've got stunned crew here." The doctor nodded, glancing quizzically at Trip. 

"Did you say that Malcolm said it would be faster?" he asked, eyebrows raised. 

"I did," said Trip, hefting one of the stunned crewmen into the pod. "It's a long story. I'll tell you on the way up, Doctor." 

Hoshi did not envy Trip that explanation. She knew neither man liked this one bit; Archer's own frustration fizzed through her consciousness like bubbles from a glass of soda. Of course, had it been her being possessed by the captain, she would have felt exactly the same way. But Trip and the captain were their friends and their commanding officers, and they were loyal enough to put up with Hoshi and Malcolm for a while. 

She hoped it would be only a while, anyway. Her thought must have reached Archer, because he said silently, I'll do everything I can to get you back, Hoshi. Perhaps it was simply a captain's reassurance. She wasn't sure. 

I know you will, Captain. But she didn't say it to him, just to the part of his mind that she occupied at the moment. He did not hear. "Okay, have we got a transporter operator?" called Archer out loud, and Trip nodded to him from inside the shuttlepod hatch, and tossed him the phase pistol. The captain nodded back and gave a thumbs-up, and Trip pulled the door closed. "Get up there quickly," Archer added as the pod lifted off from the surface. Hoshi was not paying attention to the shuttlepod, though, but to the images she saw through Archer's peripheral vision. 

She saw the Betweeners moving around, like mist in the air, and shuddered. Archer asked, "What's wrong?" but she did not answer. How easily had they gotten her and Malcolm to come down to Falling Rocks? They could reach through and grab ahold of their thoughts from the portal. 

One of them turned and looked directly at her: Pyrrih, his eyes glowing golden and indistinct against the shining sand of the desert planet. "You have committed a grave crime against us, Hoshi Sato," he said. "Once we have your crew, you will pay." 

She seized control of the captain; he protested and fought, but could not wrest it back from her. "Get away from there!" she shouted, seeing several crewmembers start towards the cave entrance. "That's an order!" 

They jerked upright, as if they had been sleepwalking, and stared at the captain. "Everyone move away from the entrance, where we can't see it," she ordered, struggling to restrain a furious Archer. "Hold hands and if you feel someone start to move towards that cave shake them as hard as you can." 

The crew moved into a line, and Hoshi sighed, gripping T'Pol's hand on one side and Lieutenant Hess' on the other. "Wait for the shuttle to contact us before you move," she said. "No one moves from this line. No one." 

Pyrrih's ghostly eyes met her own. "You will not escape us, Hoshi Sato. We have waited too long for life." He glided away, throwing one last comment over his shoulder. 

"And when the time comes, you will pay."


	8. CHAPTER 8--If You Die In A Dream

CHAPTER 8--If You Die In A Dream 

"Stop it, Malcolm," Trip said for the seventh time, having regained control of his own lips once more. 

I can't help it. There isn't any other way for me to communicate. "Are you going to be stuck in there forever?" 

I most certainly hope not, Commander. Look on the bright side, at least you aren't pregnant again. "This is worse than being pregnant by a long shot." 

Malcolm laughed silently, knowing full well that Tucker could hear him even if no one else could. The doctor, Travis Mayweather, and the transporter tech, Roger Jamison, all gaped at the one-sided conversation. Of course, his laughter held a somewhat nervous tinge to it; what if Trip was right, and there was no way to get back into his own body? He didn't know if there was a way to even get OUT of Trip's body. 

Don't think about that now, he said to himself, keeping the thought private from the commander. You'll only go mad. 

Travis grunted as the shuttle lurched and scraped into place. "Home sweet home," he said. "We're the only ones on the ship, Commander...uh, and Lieutenant, too." 

"Thank you, Ensign." 

"STOP THAT RIGHT NOW." 

Neither of them missed Travis' eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. "I wish I had a video recorder," said Jamison under his breath, obviously quite amused by the whole thing. "This is better than Gollum." 

"If you don't mind," said Phlox tersely, "I could use some help getting my patients to Sickbay." 

Malcolm's consciousness flared with such sudden fear and anger that Trip stumbled and nearly dropped Ensign Harris onto the walkway floor. "What? What's in Sickbay?" asked the commander, steadying himself. 

I am. 

"Oh. I forgot about that," said Trip. 

You know, you can speak silently and I can still hear you. 

"I like speaking out loud. Lets me know I'm not going crazy." 

Going? How do you know you aren't? Maybe I am, and this is all just a dream. Nothing real at all here. Oh, God. Maybe I really am dead. 

"Malcolm. Calm down," said Trip. The doors to Sickbay swooshed open, and neither man knew who made their shared body shudder. The Betweeners had not bothered to unhook Malcolm and Hoshi from the life-support. 

"Why bother?" said a voice. Malcolm glanced around through Trip's eyes and saw Thetik standing at the head of his biobed, one hand poised just above Malcolm's slowly rising and falling chest. "You can't get back anyway. If you come back to the portal, you will have to bring these empty shells to inhabit. And we will be ready for you, Malcolm Reed, and when you leave your friend's body you will be cast into the void. And we will have two bodies instead of only one." 

Go to hell, said Malcolm. 

"I'm afraid hell is reserved for you, my dear child." Lazily Thetik stepped away from the pale wraith-Malcolm on the bed, and came towards Tucker. Until that moment Malcolm had not realized that he was controlling Trip's muscles, holding them stock-still and glaring at the Betweener. 

"And I wouldn't stay too long in your friend there's mind, either. We've tried it, and the host always dies. You must take over to survive. You can leave it at any time, Malcolm Reed, but you cannot get back in." 

Go away. 

"Go away? We can wait. We are very good at that." Thetik flashed one more smile at them and turned away. "You may yet stop us from taking what is ours, Malcolm Reed, but you will not save yourself. You were doomed the moment you heard our voices in your head." 

As the Betweener disappeared Malcolm unclenched Trip's fists and finally let the commander go. "WHAT IN BLAZES ARE YOU DOING!" exploded Trip. "GET OUT OF MY HEAD, MALCOLM!" 

"Let me save Enterprise," whispered Malcolm through Trip's throat, marching them towards the transporter. "Then I'll leave you alone forever." 

Tucker, fuming, didn't bother to ask what Malcolm meant by that, and Malcolm did not bother to tell him. 

"Okay," said Archer. "You're next." He nodded to Cook, who let go of the line of hands and stepped away, disappearing in a shimmer of sparkling dust. Hoshi breathed a sigh of relief through Archer's mouth. Only sixteen crew members to go. Six times already they had needed to forcibly restrain crewmen from heading back towards Falling Rocks. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pyrrih and several others standing, just waiting. "We should beam up two at a time. It's going to get easier for them to take us as there are less of us," she said, using Archer's mouth. They'd already figured out that the power of the Betweeners was rather limited; they couldn't strongly control more than a few people at a time. Hoshi thought that they'd probably had help from the Betweeners already in possession of a mind to bring the entire crew down before. 

"Stop struggling, Hoshi," said Pyrrih. She did not reply, just made the captain's hands clench more tightly around T'Pol and Lieutenant Hess. Now there were fourteen. 

Beside her, T'Pol stirred and tried to let go of Archer's hand. He gripped it as hard as he could and shook her sharply. She jumped and shook her head, looking more bemused than Hoshi had ever seen her. 

"Don't let them do it, T'Pol," said Archer warningly. "Hess and Simons, you're up." The two stepped away from the line and glanced at each other as they shimmered off of the planet. 

Eight remaining. "Four at a time," said Hoshi. 

Archer did not like that idea, she could feel it, and truth to tell, neither did she, but she liked the idea of being possessed even less. Four of the crew, murmuring anxiously amongst themselves, stepped away. Then the last four dropped hands. Immediately they felt the Betweeners struggling to gain control, but the transporters were too quick. "Get us away from this planet," Archer ordered the moment he materialized inside the transport chamber. "I don't care where, just get us out of here." 

"Aye, sir," said Mayweather over the com, and Hoshi heard the warp engines purr as they sprang into life. Archer strode directly to Sickbay, directing anyone who asked him a question to T'Pol. 

Do you have any idea how to get them out? he asked Hoshi silently. 

No, sir. I don't know how. He shook his head. "How are they, doctor?" he asked as he walked through the Sickbay doors. 

"Still stunned," said Phlox. "But there is definitely evidence of the same brainwave patterns that I found in Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Sato three days ago, when they first complained to me of their nightmares." 

"Do you have any idea how to get them out?" asked the captain, and Phlox shook his head. 

"I have an idea," said Trip's voice in a British accent. Archer and the doctor turned around; Hoshi wondered how long he had been standing there. 

"What's your idea, Com-- um, Lieutenant?" said Archer. 

He stepped away from the wall, uncrossing Trip's arms. Hoshi saw in his eyes--Malcolm's eyes at the moment--that dead, haunted look once more. "Kill them." Hoshi and Archer both gasped at the same time. "Kill them and then revive them. That will force the Betweener out," he said. 

"And if it doesn't?" asked Phlox, his usual cheerfulness completely absent. 

"Then we try something else," said Malcolm. "You can revive them, can't you? Stop their hearts for a few moments and then start them again?" 

"Can you do it?" asked Archer. Hoshi wondered how he could say it so coolly. 

"I can do it," said Phlox. "I do not want to do it. But I can do it." 

Archer nodded and the doctor, face grim, set about making preparations. 

"Malcolm, where is Trip?" said the captain. 

"He's fighting tooth and nail to get back up here," said Malcolm coldly. "But I need control right now." 

"What makes you think this will work?" 

"Something that one of them told me," said Malcolm. Hoshi shivered; she did not like hearing his voice come from Tucker's mouth one bit. Did Archer sound like her when she used his mouth? "They want to experience death. That makes me think that they die as well when their new hosts do. And they don't have a mind to hold on to when they die, so I think it is final." 

Archer shook his head. "That's a pretty tenuous theory," he said. "But it's the only one we've got, I guess." He looked back at Malcolm/Trip. "Why did they want you two out of the way?" 

"We would have warned you if they'd have let us stay," said Malcolm. "We would have seen them and thought that something odd was going on and told you not to go near that planet." 

You didn't listen to us about the nightmares, though, Hoshi said to Archer. So I don't know why they bothered. Would you have listened to us about hallucinations? 

Archer did not respond, but she could feel his anger. "I'm ready," said Phlox. "We will try with Ensign Harris first." 

Phlox had stuck monitors and electrodes all over the young man's bare chest and face, with a mask and tube of oxygen over his mouth. With a grim face he nodded to the captain, and pressed one button on the display. The ensign jerked upwards, gave one long sigh, and stilled. 

For a moment there was no sound except the long, flat whine of the heart monitor. "How long?" asked Phlox. 

"Not long," said Malcolm. Hoshi noticed that his face contorted as he spoke. Trip must be fighting with him for control. 

The doctor pressed the button again, and the electrodes lit up with sparks. Harris' chest rose suddenly as the oxygen mask inflated his lungs, and the heart monitor beeped again. 

"Did it work?" Hoshi was not sure who had asked. She couldn't seem to hear anything properly anymore except the whine of the beeping monitors. 

"C-Captain?" coughed Harris, sitting up slowly. "What happened?" 

"It worked," said Archer jubilantly. "Good job, Lieutenant!" He slapped Trip's back and went up to speak to Harris. Hoshi could not help but go along, but she caught a glimpse of Malcolm out of the corner of her eye and wondered what else was troubling him. 

Phlox moved to the other biobeds and began to attach the same electrodes to Crewman Sepanik and Ensign Vinich. 

"So now you kill us," came Pyrrih's voice. 

I'm sorry. What you're doing is just wrong. It's their lives you're taking! "And do we not also deserve the chance to live?" he asked plaintively. 

Don't they? "We are just as sentient as they are," he said. "We are just as individual." 

You are taking their lives away from them. 

Like you took our lives away from us! spat Malcolm, suddenly interjecting himself into the conversation. "We did. But it was necessary, don't you understand?" Sepanik sat up in bed and coughed harshly, reaching out to Phlox as he clucked and fussed over his patient. "Another one," said Pyrrih, but in his voice there was awe rather than grief. "Another one." Hoshi heard it this time: envy. 

You want to die, she said simply. 

"I want to get out of this cursed existence!" cried Pyrrih so harshly that Hoshi wondered how it was that no one but Malcolm heard it. 

Malcolm said, Put yourself in the void for a few thousand years. You'll go mad after a while and never know anything else. Then he swung Trip's body around and stared at the wall. 

"That is what will be done to you, you snivelling little wretch!" cried the Betweener, puffing up with rage. "You think we are finished? They will return to try and save you. We know they will." 

He disappeared. Hoshi felt around for Malcolm's mental signature and said silently, Malcolm, it will be okay, it will be okay. But apparently she could only hear him when a Betweener spoke to them as well, because if he answered she did not hear it. 

Archer woke that night with a hammer pounding between his temples. When Hoshi's soft thought asked him what was wrong, he screamed at the pain and fell to the floor as Porthos whined. 

He hardly even felt it when she wrested control away from him and rushed his body out the door and into the hallway. His mind burned and burned, and every time she reassured him, it only made things worse. 

"Get out of my head," he whispered, and he could not tell if he had actually spoken the words aloud, not knowing and hardly caring where the ensign made his body go. "Get out get out get out get out get out get out..."


	9. CHAPTER 9--Do You Die in Real Life?

CHAPTER 9--Do You Die in Real Life? 

"I can feel how much he hurts," said Hoshi tersely, barely keeping Archer's fingernails from digging into his thighs. "What's wrong, Doctor Phlox?" 

"You've been a most impossible patient these last few days, Ensign," said the doctor, though his voice belied his calm appearance. "Too many unsolvable problems." He swept the scanner up and down over Archer's forehead and stared at his captain with alarm written all over his face. "This one, however, is all too easy to understand." 

"What is it?" 

"His synaptic pathways are destabilizing," said the doctor gravely. "The outer cortex is slowly disintegrating. That's what's causing him pain; the nerves in his skull are firing off randomly as the destabilization affects them." 

Argh...Hoshi, I'm sorry... came the captain's mental voice, barely making it through the static fuzz of pain that surrounded his consciousness. 

"It's me, isn't it?" Hoshi asked the doctor. "Because I'm in here. For some reason I'm causing this." She glanced over at her body, lying still and quiet on the biobed. 

"It's an overload. The human brain is designed to work with only one consciousness. Two fully realized personalities using one set of neural pathways is too much for it." 

"So I have to leave or he'll die." 

"I estimate he has only about twenty-four hours until the damage is too severe for him to recover at all. Forty-eight until he is completely brain dead." The doctor shook his head and went over to the comm. "Phlox to Commander Tucker. Or Lieutenant Reed." 

"Yes, Doctor?" The answer came so quickly that Hoshi wondered if Malcolm had even tried to go to bed. It had reminded her uncomfortably of the void that they had been trapped in at the beginning of all this, sitting in Archer's mind as he slept. She supposed it would be worse for Malcolm, unable to do anything but lie there in Trip's sleeping mind. She was sure he hadn't even tried to rest. 

"Please come to Sickbay immediately." 

Malcolm murmured assent, and the comm went silent. 

"What do you think we should do, Doctor?" asked Hoshi. 

"Find a way to restore you to your own proper bodies, I suppose," said Phlox. He looked at them both, lifeless except for the machines, and shook his head. "I haven't any idea how to do that, though." 

"Maybe Malcolm will think of something," said Hoshi. "He knew how to save the others." 

"A surprisingly easy solution, too," said Phlox. "Perhaps the answer is right there in front of us, and we simply cannot see it." 

Hoshi shook her head and shrugged. The silence weighed heavily on them, but neither wanted to break it, afraid that they would not want to hear the next words to come from their mouths. 

She knew what she had to do; the problem lay in finding the courage to do it. Perhaps the solution was simple, and she could just step right out of the captain's body and into her own. Deep down inside her, though, she knew it could not be that easy. 

Trip walked in, sidling through the doors with Malcolm's characteristic strides rather than his own, and Hoshi wondered again if the lieutenant had let the commander have any control at all. His face, normally smiling and cheerful, was pale and drawn, with dark circles under his eyes. 

"Ah. So he feels it too," said Malcolm. It was not a question. 

She heard the weariness in his voice, the sadness, and replied, "They're dying, Malcolm." 

"I know." 

"You know?" 

"Thetik came to me and told me that if we stayed too long they would die." 

"And you didn't tell me?" 

"I had things to do. I had to make sure Enterprise got away." 

Phlox stood by, listening silently. Hoshi knew what Malcolm would say next and she had never yearned so much for silence in her entire life. Yet regardless of whether or not he said anything, the truth remained. 

"We must leave them," Malcolm said. "Go back Between. If we want them to live." 

She felt tears well up in her eyes; she had never seen the captain weep, never, and she knew it must look quite strange to the others. But she could not help it. 

"Right now?" she asked, plaintively. 

He laughed, a short, sharp bark that sent shivers down her spine. "How long, Doctor?" 

"Twenty-four hours until the damage is irreversible," said Phlox quietly. 

Damn you, Malcolm... always the damned martyr... came Archer's thought unexpectedly. 

"Then leave in a few hours, Hoshi," he said. "Get your affairs in order. Write your farewells. Say goodbye. Don't record them, though, or they'll think the captain's gone mad." 

The tears poured down her face. "You know what will happen to us," she said. "What they threatened." 

"The void, forever," he whispered, so softly that Hoshi, listening with Archer's less attuned ears, could barely hear him. "I know, Hoshi. I shall go mad in a few centuries. I expect it'll be better then." 

"You've already gotten your affairs in order, haven't you?" she cried. "You knew already. You're leaving now!" 

He smiled, one last crooked grin, and for a split second Tucker's body shone with a brilliant white light. Then Trip slumped to the floor with a moan. The doctor leapt forward and barely caught him before his head smacked on the hard tile. "Malcolm, damn it, what the hell are you doing?" he said weakly. 

The doctor murmured to him and gently maneuvered him onto a biobed. Hoshi turned away; there was Malcolm, back in child form, swirling misty blue and silver. His ocean-gray eyes met her borrowed brown ones, and he nodded at her. 

"I'm not afraid, Hoshi," he said, though she didn't believe that for a second. He reared back suddenly, mouth open wide, and vanished instantly, leaving no trace at all behind him. 

"WAIT!!" cried another voice from Between. Pyrrih burst into Sickbay, materializing right in the middle of the doctor's body (though Phlox didn't seem to notice) and zoomed right to the place Malcolm had been standing. He turned to Hoshi, the shock and fear evident on his golden countenance. 

"I am too late!" he cried. 

Too late for what? spat Hoshi. I'll be along shortly, don't you worry. He turned to her, holding out his hands in despair. "I would have saved you. Made a bargain with you, Hoshi Sato. Kept you from eternity in the void. But he was quicker than I thought, both Malcolm Reed and Thetik, for I see that Thetik has already snatched him away." 

Thetik wanted revenge, said Hoshi bitterly. What would you have offered? 

"I saw you do it today," he said. "Six times you murdered one of us. And none of the six have returned Between. They have truly died and escaped this eternal watching." 

You want to die, Hoshi said, and remembering saying the exact same words earlier. 

"No," said Pyrrih with a bit of a bitter smirk crossing his features. "I want to live, experiencing the universe as it ought to be experienced, touching and tasting and talking and smelling and feeling everything. I ask that you allow me to live in your body for a day and then you expel me as you did the others, so that I can finally rest. I wanted one more chance at life, but I cannot have it in full." 

What must I do? asked Hoshi. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the doctor and Trip, now not so pale, watching her intently. She ignored them for the moment, grasping at what she hoped was a chance to save herself and of course Malcolm. 

"Bring back one of your smaller ships. The shuttlepods, I believe they are called. Come back to Falling Rocks. Bring your corporeal body, too. I will fend off Thetik and the others. It will be difficult, of course, but I am sure that I can do it." 

What about Malcolm? 

"I do not know if I can save him. Thetik was very angry. He will cast Malcolm Reed far into the void, so deep that I fear I cannot get him out, and he will trap him in his own delusions, so that he cannot ever get himself out." 

Leave that to me, then. I got him out once before. 

"Very well. I shall travel with your ship and keep all the others away until you can return to Falling Rocks." 

That will work, said Hoshi. I'll tell Trip and the doctor and the others what to do. 

Pyrrih nodded. "I will begin to prepare," he said. "I will return to help you when you reach the planet." 

Pyrrih, Hoshi called. He looked at her over his shoulder. Thank you. 

T'Pol did not like this plan one bit. "There must be another way," she stated to the body that was not Captain Archer for the moment. "There are too many risks to both you and the captain." 

His face remained grave and stubborn, as impassive as most stoic of Vulcans. "I have thought this through, T'Pol. Once we are close enough to the planet, I will leave the captain's body and go in search of Malcolm. I would rather have simply beamed our bodies down into the cave, but the doctor has refused to stay behind, so he and Travis will take us down in a shuttle. Phlox wants to be there if there is a chance of something going wrong." 

T'Pol, not being human, did not shudder at the sound of Archer's voice used for Ensign Sato's inflections. She did not shudder to think that an entire race of people existed just outside the fabric of space-time, looking in at them at all times because there was nothing else to do. 

That didn't mean, though, that she did not feel unnerved. 

"There is no other way, T'Pol, and we're very lucky that we found someone to help us," said Sato flatly. No emotion revealed itself in her borrowed voice, and T'Pol wondered if she had actually suppressed them or merely could not manifest them in someone else's body. 

A chime sounded on the captain's chair, across the bridge. Ensign Mayweather looked up. "We're there, Hoshi," he said. T'Pol started, and immediately chided herself for loss of control. 

"You made the course change without authorization," she said. 

"I have authorization. The captain knows what is going on," said his body, smiling grimly. 

T'Pol rose from her chair. "That is an offense suitable for court-martial," she told the ensign. "Your actions are insubordinate. You will desist at once." 

"T'Pol, I do not care," Sato replied bluntly. "Travis, you know what to do. T'Pol, you might have a more pressing concern on your hands for a while. The doctor has instructions in Sickbay. I suggest you follow them." 

T'Pol fumed inwardly. Humans. Archer's head turned to the side, staring at what was apparently only the empty armory station, and nodded. 

"I've got to go. Travis, start down to the planet now. Pyrrih says he can protect you on the way down, but be careful anyway." 

The ensign nodded and stood. He made it to the turbolift before T'Pol regained her scattered wits and said, "Ensign, stop at once." He only shook his head and stared at her as the doors closed. 

A hand touched her shoulder. "Remember, instructions are in Sickbay," Archer's voice said. Then he slumped against her, with a slight moan. T'Pol looked around wildly and beckoned to one of the crewmen monitoring the rear stations. She held the captain's shoulders as Crewman Mitchell maneuvered his feet around and toward the lift. 

"We must get him to Sickbay," she said. Mitchell nodded, and huffed as she shifted around to get a better grip. 

Just for a moment, before the lift doors closed, T'Pol thought she saw a child standing where Archer had been, only a smoky, vague image of a little girl with shining pink and lavender skin like the petals of some rare flower, looking at her with great limpid golden eyes. 

But when she blinked there was no one.


	10. CHAPTER 10--Sleepyland

CHAPTER 10--Sleepyland

"Hoshi Sato. You stand accused of preventing the rightful acquisition of life and property from your elders and betters." 

"I accuse you of stealing that life from its true owners!" Hoshi shot back. "And stealing my own life from me." 

Thetik glared; his anger rolled from him like waves crashing upon the shore. "Are you dead, then? We have done nothing wrong. Nothing any less wrong than those who did the same to us, brat! This is how it always has been. This is how it always will be. We come, we watch for a few millennia, and we wait our turn to live once more." 

"Why do you do this?" she cried. "Why not stop it? You know the anguish, why inflict it on others?" 

"Because we cannot use your minds, and you would threaten the cycle," said Thetik, coming right up to her, butting into her consciousness and indeed her very thoughts. "You would warn your crew and they would come nowhere near the planet and we would lose our chance. We tested you with the nightmares, to see if you would be a threat, and indeed you were. You are." He turned away, facing now the assembled mass of Betweeners all seething with hatred for Hoshi and what she had stopped them from doing. 

"You are a threat, Hoshi Sato, and thus we shall make you less of one." He did not face her as the universe around her began to swirl and flood in upon itself. "Enjoy eternity." 

And then they were gone, all those grim, glaring faces and waves of anger, and she stood alone in endless black space, enclosed by nothing and nothing forever. "Malcolm, you had better appreciate this," she whispered, but the sound fell back, quashed by the endless emptiness. If she had not been able to look down and see her own body, or what passed for her own body Between, she would have believed her eyes had suddenly been stricken blind. Malcolm had been right to fear this place; without another mind to share the terror, she barely remembered that the universe existed. 

But she could beat this, she knew that Archer and Trip and T'Pol and Travis and Phlox and Liz Cutler and everyone else that mattered to her were out there somewhere, and she knew that she was their friend. 

She also knew that someone she cared about was in here as well, somewhere in the endless black. She cast about her, feeling with the mental senses of a Betweener rather than the physical senses of a human, and could not find him. Only echoes remained, a faint trace here and there. To her surprise she felt a glimpse of herself, and followed the thread back. 

"Colors," she heard herself say. "Like we were flying through a painting. And the cave. Do you remember going into the cave I drew?" There they were, herself and Malcolm, but try as she might she could not reach them. Perhaps all times existed as one in the void. Or there was no time and her mind merely imposed the order it understood on the inexplicable situation. She could not reach them, but she could feel them, and she could feel another Malcolm somewhere else. 

So she left them behind as they attempted to make sense of the gravity that did not really exist, and followed the other trail of Malcolm. Again she could not reach out to him, but she heard him. "Hoshi, Hoshi, please hear me..." 

I do, she said, but of course he did not know that she was even there. 

"I never felt at home anywhere until Enterprise," he said, sobbing. "I never belonged. I walked around the world just like the Betweeners do, no contact with anything. And now that I know something different I can't go back! Don't make me go back to it! Please, someone, someone, anyone, hear me! I do exist! I do!" 

She could not listen to it. His pleas rang in her ears, private things that he would never have said out loud to anyone, harsh and cold with despair, and she fled, no longer caring where she went or if she ever found him. 

So of course she found herself sitting next to the right Malcolm as he stared blankly into space. 

"Malcolm!" she cried, waving her hands before his face. He did not even blink. 

Carefully, gently, she took his cheeks in her hands and knelt on the emptiness in front of him, and dove into him, the true Malcolm, feeling his very soul wash over her as she had earlier felt the true essence of Pyrrih. 

In his mind she saw a father, never once speaking a word of love, and a mother who tried but failed to make up the difference. A sister who cared about him but who never could really know her brother because he did not let her in. 

She saw friends pass by, never knowing the true Malcolm, lovers who despaired because they could not get to the real person. In all of this flood of images she saw Malcolm in none of them. Because, she supposed, in his view he had not really been there. He had watched like he did not truly belong to the universe. 

"Don't you dare think that," Hoshi said. "Regardless of whether or not you feel you were there, you were, and you left an imprint on everything. Who cares if they don't know your favorite food. You didn't just watch all your life, no matter what they say." 

Damn you, Thetik, she thought to herself, because he had found one thing that truly meant hell for every single individual. She felt her own walls beginning to crack, and she knew that he had implanted the same suggestion in her own mind, that she did not really exist, and in a few moments she doubted she could escape at all. 

"Malcolm," she said, stepping backwards, trying to look him in the eyes, "Malcom, please, please wake up." If she could just let him know that she was there...! 

She couldn't remember what he really looked like. He had blue eyes, she remembered, or did he? 

What color were her own eyes? 

Somewhere deep within her mind she knew that Thetik's meme had begun to work on her, to make her doubt her own existence and condemn her to nothingness, but she could not make herself realize this. "Malcolm, please please please, wake up, I need you, please help me," she whispered, reaching out one last time to touch him. 

Her fingers groped but felt nothing, her mind slid over glass walls; no more Malcolm, no more Hoshi, no more... 

She screamed to the universe that she existed, and the universe did not answer. 

But someone else heard her cry, and awakened in the split second before she ceased to be herself any longer. A light touch on her mind, and she fell no further, and came back to being, came back to herself. 

"Hoshi..." said Malcolm. 

She began to laugh, and then could not stop the flood of sobs as he held her close, trembling himself but no longer lost. 

"We are inside the cave," said Phlox tersely into the communicator. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the two pale bodies lying supine on the gurneys. Mayweather hovered around them, checking the life support monitors as Phlox had shown him. "We have positioned them on Ensign Sato's exact coordinates, just as she instructed, but there are no signs of any brainwave patterns." 

"Do you feel any... um, effects... like we did earlier?" came Archer's voice over the comm. 

"Neither of us are experiencing anything," replied Phlox. "Captain, I ordered you to stay in sickbay. You have been through a rather traumatic ordeal." 

"I am in sickbay. T'Pol set up a communications relay for Trip and me so I could monitor the situation, doctor. Don't worry, we're both resting." 

"Very well," said Phlox, though he rather doubted the last statement, and clicked the comm unit shut. 

"Yeah, right, those two resting?" said Mayweather under his breath. Phlox suppressed a smile and turned back to the ensign. 

"I wouldn't speak like that, Mr. Mayweather," said Phlox. "You've been a difficult patient yourself at times. I've noticed that among the humans aboard Enterprise there is a peculiar trait of disdaining the advice of your medical officer." 

Travis grinned. "We all like to stay busy," he said. 

"Hmm. I'll keep that in mind. There are quite a few menial tasks that most patients in Sickbay could perform, like cleaning out the bat's cage and feeding the Regulan bloodworms, that would not overly tax them and keep them busy." 

"Just don't expect me as a patient for a while, doc." 

Phlox smiled again, and they fell silent. The doctor drowsed in the cool, dark cave, idly monitoring his patients. He didn't really expect anything to happen, to tell the truth, but he felt that he had to try for the sake of Lieutenant Reed and Ensign Sato, not to mention their friends and families. 

Truth to tell, he did not like this false hope. He would rather simply accept the hard fact: there was nothing he could do to save the Lieutenant and the Ensign, and it was merely prolonging the inevitable. 

"Doctor," said Travis suddenly. "Do you see that?" 

The ensign stared intently at a patch of darkness just at the foot of Sato's gurney. "What are you looking at, Ensign?" asked Phlox. 

"There's... it's like a person, I think. Like a ghost," he said, and cocked his head to the side. "But I can't really quite see it. Just sort of like a mist with a face." 

"I suppose that is one of Malcolm's Betweeners, then," said Phlox dubiously. Without letting Travis see, he scanned the human's body and found things normal. 

"I guess that means they're coming," said Travis. "Hey! I think it just nodded!" 

"Tell me if it does anything else," said Phlox, turning back to his scans and marveling at how very gullible the human mind seemed to be. 

The Void folded back in upon itself, preventing them egress and refusing all attempts to escape it. Hoshi could feel Pyrrih, calling them and urging them on, somewhere deep and distant, very far away from wherever they were now. 

She clenched Malcolm's hand in her own and tried, again, to latch onto Pyrrih's mind and pull them out. Beside her, with her, Malcolm groped about, seeking the way out. He was too weak to do very much, though, after all his mind had been through. 

It was up to her, Hoshi knew, and with one last heave she broke them free of the Void and hurled them through a blur of color and motion to Pyrrih's side, deep within the cave called Falling Rocks. 

Malcolm clung to her, gasping; he had been so strong, so comforting in the Void that she hardly believed it was the same person for a moment. But she felt in her own mind that she had taxed it nearly to the breaking point. 

"It is about time," said Pyrrih, voice and mental signature strained with the effort of holding back Thetik and his followers. "Go! Now!" 

She wrenched Malcolm along behind her, seeing her own body there, open and waiting for her to reclaim it. "Hurry up!" she cried to Pyrrih, and at the last moment he turned and dove with them, back into their own proper bodies and home. 

Only a moment passed as she felt her own limbs respond to her command, felt her lungs inflate under her own will, then exhaustion overtook her and she slipped back into darkness with Doctor Phlox's incredulous voice ringing in her very own ears. 

"I don't believe it! They are alive!"


	11. CHAPTER 11--Good Dreams

CHAPTER 11--Good Dreams 

"No, no, please...go away, please..." 

"Malcolm, wake up, we're here, don't worry..." 

A cool hand touched his forehead, smoothing the hair back from his temples and dabbing away the beaded sweat collecting on his skin. 

"Hoshi?" 

"For the moment, yes." 

He did not understand; he tried to open his eyes and found that the world shivered and blurred around him. Hoshi's face swam before his eyes and then trembled before finally settling into stability. For a moment he choked as his lungs drew in too much air. 

"I know, I know," she said soothingly. "I woke up about an hour ago. I think I'd feel better if I'd gotten hit by a shuttlepod." 

"What did you tell them?" said Malcolm, his voice catching and rasping in his throat. 

"I haven't told them anything yet," Hoshi replied. "Especially about who came back with us." 

He met her eyes and still did not understand. "What?" he said, and began to cough harshly. Days of life-support did not agree with him, apparently. "Who came back? From the void or from Between?" Hoshi handed him a glass of water, and watched him for a few seconds as he drank deeply, savoring the liquid on his parched tongue. 

"I came back," Hoshi said. In amazement Malcolm reached out a hand to her face, seeking explanation for the sudden shift in expression and inflection. 

"Who...who are you?" he asked. What was Hoshi and yet not leaned into his touch, and lightly he ran his fingertips over her cheek. 

"You're right," said Hoshi's voice, sounding so like her but still completely different. "You're right, Malcolm Reed, watching this hardly compares to truly being here." 

"But you always knew that, Pyrrih," said Malcolm softly, recognizing the voice at last. "What are you doing in her body?" 

"Oh, don't worry, Malcolm Reed. I'm not staying," said the Betweener quietly. "There is only one thing that I need her body for, besides a few last experiences before I commit myself to the great Unknown." 

Malcolm's eyebrows furrowed as he gazed at the young ensign. He could not think what the Betweener would need to do, since after all he had the chance to live even if only for a little while. Where was the doctor, he suddenly wondered, and why was it only Hoshi here with him? 

How long had he been asleep? 

"I need your help, Malcolm Reed," said Pyrrih gravely, taking the now-empty cup of water from Malcolm's hands and setting it by the side of the biobed. "Come with me." 

"What are you doing?" said Malcolm, sitting up and letting out an involuntary groan as he discovered just how very stiff his back had gotten. 

"I assure you it is nothing to harm you, Hoshi Sato, or any of your crewmates. But I do need your help." Hoshi's hand reached out for him and gave him a lift out of the bed, and carefully steadied him as his legs threatened to give way beneath him. 

"Where is Doctor Phlox?" Malcolm asked, looking around. His head had begun to pound alarmingly, but he gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it. 

"Come with me," said Pyrrih, leading him away from the bed and towards the Sickbay doors. Feeling as if he were dreaming, Malcolm followed, his legs shivering beneath him and his head swimming with a sudden weakness. 

They met not a single soul as they strode through the ship's corridors. Only the soft pad of their bare feet on the metal decking and the faint hum of the warp engine marred the silence. Malcolm did not dare ask what was happening; he merely followed, willing himself to stay awake and upright as he trod onward in Pyrrih's footsteps. 

He doubted now that Hoshi had let Pyrrih take control, and with that thought he wished fervently for a phase pistol. Whatever this Betweener was doing, he did not like it. Where was everyone else? Didn't they know the danger of this mental power that inhabited Hoshi's brain? 

Ah, but no. She hadn't told them, had she? No one knew that Pyrrih was lurking in her head, ready to bring the ship down and everyone on it. No. How long had he been asleep? He had to set off the security alert, get everyone's attention on them, so they could kill and revive Hoshi to get that thing out of her... 

And blindly, belatedly, he realized that his fingers were working the controls in the armory, the controls that launched the torpedoes, and he could not stop himself as his index finger raced towards the button to fire. 

"What did you do?" cried Malcolm, wresting control back from Pyrrih and jumping back from the console as if it had suddenly burst into flame. With horror he read the diagnostic panels, frantic to discover what enemy of the Betweeners had now been unwittingly destroyed. He tripped, legs still unsteady, and slammed his shoulder painfully into the door of the open weapons locker. 

"What did you do?" Malcolm shouted again as his fingers fumbled through the locker. Hoshi's figure came towards him, solemn and graceful, and he found what he was looking for--a phase pistol, set to kill. 

She crumpled to the deck, dark eyes still open, and for an instant that lasted a lifetime Malcolm stared at the forlorn body on the deck. 

He nearly died of shock himself when Phlox, two of the medical staff, the captain, T'Pol, and Trip all burst through the doors of the armory, all talking at once and so quickly that Malcolm's stunned brain could not make sense of anything. 

He saw Phlox attaching electrodes, saw him inject something, into Hoshi's body, and let the phase pistol fall from his fingers. "What was he shooting at?" he asked, and none of them heard him, so he looked again at the monitors. The target had been reached; only a pile of smoking rock remained and he did not understand for a long moment. 

Somewhere near him he felt Hoshi, felt her mental signature brush against his, and he knelt down next to her, touching her face with a gentle hand. He did not see the captain and Trip exchange confused glances, and he would not have cared if he had. She felt confused, this feeling that was Hoshi herself, so he told her where to go. 

"I brought you back this time," said Malcolm softly as she blinked and began to gasp as air flooded back into her lungs. Her dark eyes met his blue ones, and when he took her hand, she did not let go until they were both back in Sickbay and confined to bed by the understandably irate doctor. 

"Why did he do it, do you think?" asked Hoshi much later, after long sleeps and several lectures by the doctor, the captain, and Trip. Both of them lay sprawled over the biobeds, lounging in sickbay blues and trying to get their bodies accustomed to being inhabited again. 

"He didn't want anyone else's life being stolen," said Malcolm. He leaned back against the pillow, enjoying the way it felt against his sore back, and stretched languorously. Every sensation welcomed him back, letting him know that the universe indeed acknowledged this small life that dwelled within it. "I think he knew that what they were doing was wrong." 

"It's unfair to all of them still in there," said Hoshi mournfully. "They're just stuck there forever." 

"I suppose," Malcolm said, and truly did feel sympathy for them, though he could not forget the terrible void. He'd already woken up once, gasping and panicking, because he had been trapped in that horrible emptiness again. 

"I don't think the captain really believes what happened," said Hoshi thoughtfully. "I'm not sure if he wants to. I think he thinks that I know all his secrets now that I've been inside his head." 

"What, you mean you didn't go poking around?" said Malcolm in mock horror. "I know things about Trip now that will give me blackmail material for years!" They both laughed, relishing the sound on the air. Malcolm knew perfectly well that the doctor was just in the next room (he'd hardly left them since Pyrrih had put him to sleep the day before to keep him from stopping his plan) but he didn't care. If Phlox could hear them, well, it simply reassured him that he did indeed exist. 

"He hasn't asked what happened yet," said Hoshi. "I don't know if he really wants to believe that his entire crew can be so vulnerable to such intangible power. It's not something that he can prevent or shoot or anything. All those crewmen down on the planet, and us inside his and Trip's head, and then all those crewmen yesterday that Pyrrih planted suggestions in..." 

Malcolm shook his head. "Everyone suddenly just had to try a piece of Chef's latest pie. Bloody hell." 

"But he needn't worry," said Hoshi softly. "Because now, if they threaten again, we'll know, and we'll pull them out. We did it once. We can do it again." 

She reached over and took his hand. "You did it twice already," said Malcolm, whispering because he suddenly did not want Phlox to hear them. "You brought me back from oblivion. You let me know that I wasn't just a figment of my own imagination... I am real and I know you are real, too...You ended the nightmare." 

She squeezed his hand tightly and looked back at him, staring deep into his eyes with a slight smile on her face. "So let the good dreams begin," she said. 

"I really, really hope this isn't a dream," said Malcolm, not letting go of her hand. In the next room, a crash broke the silence as Phlox leapt up from his chair, startled by the peals of laughter echoing through his sickbay. 

~the end~


End file.
